"Oh, Bertie, you've seen about the accident. You're heir now."
"The place is entailed," he said. "It's worth nothing. But the old man's money is his own. He may leave it to me. If we had a boy he might, no doubt he would."
Esmé flushed scarlet, turning away. The cold day grew colder. Try as she would, the old happy intimacy, their careless happy youth, would not come back. Before, she had told Bertie everything. Now if he knew, if he knew.
Her husband seemed to have grown older, graver, to be less boyish. He talked of one or two things as extravagant. They discussed Aldershot and he spoke of lodgings. Houses were impossible there.
Esmé grew petulant. Lodgings, she had seen them. Chops for dinner and cold meat and salad for lunch. They must find a house. They'd heaps of money.
They went out to luncheon, telephoned a table at the Berkeley, ordered their favourite dishes recklessly. Esmé came down in the Paris coat, open to show the blue and silver lining.
"Butterfly! What a coat," her husband exclaimed at its beauty. "Where did you get it?"
Esmé hesitated, told half the truth.
"Denise gave it to me," she said slowly. "You see I did a lot for her."
Bertie was his old self then, foolishly merry. They must go up Bond Street and order a limousine to go with the coat. It couldn't sit in taxis. When it was off in the restaurant he saw the cunning beauty of a Paris frock, a black one, the old pendant of emeralds gleaming against real lace.