"Met heaps of nice things abroad, I s'pose.... Why didn't you order a limousine, Esmé? I hate the wind in these open things ... heaps of princes, I suppose, and rich potentates, didn't you, in your travels?"
"Heaps," said Esmé. "At least we must have seen them sometimes."
"Funniest thing rushing off like that for all these months, so unlike Denise Blakeney. It didn't agree with you, Esmé; it made you thin, and different somehow."
"The climate," Esmé said, flushing a little.
"And fancy Denise not coming home for the event, trusting herself to foreign doctors and nurses."
"She did not intend to stay," Esmé answered. "She meant to be back."
"I saw the son and heir. A great fat thing, fair like Cyril. Well, it settles all the difficulties then. Denise doesn't play the rôle of devoted mother; she says the baby bores her."
A sudden wave of anger shook Esmé—fear for her child—it might be neglected, grow up unloved. Then they stopped at the toy shop at Regis.
"A parcel for Mrs Holbrook," she said to the man. Obsequious assistants ran out to the Coombe Regis motors.
A hunting man, still in his splashed pink, stopped them. He, too, was full of the great run.