“Is it likely?”
“I often do. She seems to pass it on to me. I never had a headache until I knew her. But, indeed, I never seemed to live, I never seemed to know anything, be anything, until she came into my life.”
“I wish I had known you before you knew her,” Bellairs said.
“Why?”
“I don't know—perhaps to see if you were really so very different from what you are now.”
“I was—utterly.”
“What were you like?”
“I can't remember—but I was utterly different.”
As she ceased speaking, Bellairs glanced over the rail to the river bank. Two blue-robed donkey boys stood there trying to attract his attention, and pointing significantly to their gaily-bedizened donkeys.
“Shall we go for a ride?” he said to Lady Betty. “Just along the river bank? Then we shall see Lord Braydon as he sails back. Mdlle. Leroux won't miss you. Shall we go?”