"So!" she said meditatively, as they walked.
"After it happens, when it is an accomplished fact, it will be so plainly right that nobody will think twice about it," Duff went on in an encouraged voice. "It's odd how one's ideas materialise. I want her drawing-room to be white and gold, with big yellow silk cushions."
"When its it to happen?"
"Beginning of next cold weather—in not quite a year."
"Ah! then there will be time. Time to get the white and gold furniture. It wouldn't be my taste quite. Is it Alicia's?"
"It's our own at present, Laura's and mine. We have talked it over together. And I don't think she would ask Miss Livingstone. In matters of taste women are rather rivals, aren't they?"
"Oh, Lord!" Hilda exclaimed, and bit her lip. "Where is Miss Filbert now?"
"At No. 10, Middleton street."
"With the Livingstones?"
"Is it so astonishing? Miss Livingstone has been most practical in her kindness. I have gone back, of course, to my perch at the club, and Laura is to stay with them until she sails."