“Much as she was, only more so,” cruelly adapting Zoe’s own description of her sister-in-law.
Armitage was obviously disappointed. “You have kept up with her doings, perhaps? I suppose even your exile was lightened by a Society paper now and then?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t read them if it was.”
“Then you have heard people talk of her? Of course she’s an awfully well-known woman. When she is in town, one meets her everywhere. Her travels, you see—and her personality—and her books——”
“Ah, I thought I was intended to understand that she had succeeded in perpetrating something in that line.”
“Rather!” said Armitage vivaciously, encouraged by the faint hint of interrogation in the tone. “She’s a success, you know. Not a popular success—five hundred thousand copies and all that—but with the right people. All the clever women swear by her. They say she voices the unrest of the modern woman better than anybody else.”
“Oh yes—misunderstood by her family, unappreciated by her husband, too lofty to be happy, and too self-contained to be wicked—the usual jargon,” muttered Wylie impatiently.
“More head than heart,” pursued Armitage, then broke off quickly. “I say, I believe you’ve been reading them. She calls herself Zeto.”
“What, her books? No, thank you.”
Again a dead stop. But Armitage was not to be baulked.