“A little neurotic, I think.”
Mrs. Lankhurst was a typical hard-faced, raddled, cut-mouthed Englishwoman, a woman who had ceased to trouble about her appearance simply because she had been married for fifteen years and felt herself comfortably and sexually secure. An unimaginative self-complacency seems to be the chief characteristic of this type of Englishwoman. She appears to regard marriage as a release from all attempts at subtilising the charm of dress, lets her complexion go, her figure slacken, her lips grow thin. “George” is serenely and lethargically constant, so why trouble about hats? So the good woman turns to leather, rides, gardens, plays golf, and perhaps reads questionable novels. The sex problem does not exist for her, yet Mrs. Lankhurst’s “George” was notorious and mutable behind her back. She thought him cased up in domestic buckram, and never the lover of some delightful little dame aux Camellias, who kept her neck white, and her sense of humour unimpaired.
Lynette’s white legs flashed across the grass.
“Oh, Miss Eve!”
Eve Carfax had stepped out through the open drawing-room window, a slim and sensitive figure that carried itself rather proudly in the face of a crowd.
“Lynette!”
“I knew you’d come! I knew you’d come!”
She held out hands that had to be taken and held, despite the formal crowd on the lawn.
“I’m so glad you’re back.”
A red mouth waited to be kissed.