"Why, yes," she said with a little laugh.
After some shunting our Liverpool carriages were coupled to the Scotch train and run into the station, where a number of gentlemen in knickerbockers and cloth caps were strolling about the platform.
My companion seemed to know them all, and gave them their names, generally their Christian names, and often their familiar ones.
Suddenly I had a shock. A tall man, whose figure I recognised, passed close by our carriage, and I had only time to conceal myself from observation behind the curtain of the window.
"Helloa!" cried my companion. "There's Teddy Eastcliff. He married Camilla, the Russian dancer. They first met in my shop I may tell you."
I was feeling hot and cold by turns, but a thick veil must have hidden my confusion, for after we left Crewe my companion, becoming still more confidential, talked for a long time about her aristocratic customers, and I caught a glimpse of a life that was on the verge of a kind of fashionable Bohemia.
More than once I recognised my husband's friends among the number of her clients, and trembling lest my husband himself should become a subject of discussion, I, made the excuse of a headache to close my eyes and be silent.
My companion thereupon slept, very soundly and rather audibly, from Rugby to Willesden, where, awakening with a start while the tickets were being collected, she first powdered her face by her fashion-glass and then interested herself afresh in my affairs.
"Did you say, my dear, that you have no friends in London?"
I repeated that I had none.