“May she not be dead?”
“I have a theory that nothing of us really dies while we live. Our abode changes. We know that. But I believe the inhabitant is permanent. We are what we were, with, of course, innumerable additions brought to us by the years. For instance, I believe that Lady Sellingworth now is what she was, to all intents and purposes, with additions which naturally have made great apparent changes in her. An old moss-covered house, overgrown with creepers, looks quite different from the same house when it is new and bare. But go inside—the rooms are the same, and under the moss and the creepers are the same walls.”
“It may be so. But what a difference the moss and the creepers make. Some may be climbing roses.”
Craven felt the shrewd girlish eyes were looking at him closely.
“In her case some of them certainly are!” she said. “Oh, do look at them turning the corner! If Cirella were here he would have a subject for one of his most perfect caricatures. It is the leaning tower of Pisa with a bat.”
The left wing of Ambrose Jennings’s cloak flew out as he whirled into Regent Street by Lady Sellingworth’s side.
CHAPTER VI
At the door of the Cafe Royal they stopped, and Miss Van Tuyn laid a hand on Lady Sellingworth’s arm.
“Do come in, dearest. It will really amuse you,” she said urgently. “And—I’ll be truthful—I want to show you off to the Georgians as my friend. I want them to know how wonderful an Edwardian can be.”