"I'm lunching with him on Saturday, Bert."
"Well, don't again. He's a beast. Of course there's no fear of you, but there was the Grange Stukeley girl, poor soul, married off to a parson cousin; and Lettice Greene, and—oh, heaps of his victims."
There are some women who create trust. The dazzle about Esmé was not one of warmth. It was cold as she was selfish. Her husband, without realizing this, yet knew that he might trust her implicitly, that beyond mere careless flirtation nothing amused her.
"Well, good-bye, Esmé. I must go to do a few things which don't want doing, even as this morning I paraded unwilling youths at seven."
Carteret strolled out. Esmé picked up the salts bottle, sniffing at it. She rang for a trim, superior maid to take away, going back herself to the pretty drawing-room to write a few notes.
"I'm feeling rotten," wrote Esmé to a girl friend, "slack and seedy—" and then she jumped up, crying out aloud.
"Not that! Not that! Not the end of their dual in the treble. Not the real cares of life forced on her. Oh, it could not be—it could not!" Esmé raged round the room, crying hysterically, fighting off an imaginary enemy with her hands.
It would mean a move from the little expensive flat. Doctors, nurses, extra maids swallowing their income.
"It can't be!" she stormed. "I'm mad!" and rushed off to dress.
She looked hungrily at her slim figure in her glass, watched her maid fasten hooks and buttons until the perfectly-cut early summer gown seemed to cling to the slender figure. There was that, too—a figure spoilt. Dowdy, disfiguring clothes, and fear, the fear of the inevitable. She was counting, calculating as the maid finished fastening her dress, brought her a cloudy feather wrap, deep brown over the creamy gown, long white gloves, a scented handkerchief, a bunch of deep pink roses.