Owen begged Evelyn to get ready for dinner, and as she stood waiting for the lift, she saw him resume confidential conversation with Lady Duckle.  They were, she knew, making preparations for her future life, and this was the woman she was going to live with for the next few years!  The thought gave her pause.  She dried her hands and hastened downstairs.  They were still talking in the verandah just as she had left them.  Owen signed to the coachman and told him to drive to Durand’s.  They were dining in a private room, and during dinner the conversation constantly harked back to the success that Evelyn had achieved that afternoon.  Owen told the story in well-turned sentences.  His eyes were generally fixed on Lady Duckle, and Evelyn sat listening and feeling, as Owen intended she should feel, like the heroine of a fairy tale.  She laughed nervously when, imitating Madame Savelli’s accent, he described how she had said, “If you’ll stop with me for a year, I’ll make something wonderful of you.”  Lady Duckle leaned across the table, glancing from time to time at Evelyn, as if to assure herself that she was still in the presence of this extraordinary person, and murmured something about having the honour of assisting at what she was sure would be a great career.

Owen noticed that Evelyn seemed preoccupied, and did not respond very eagerly to Lady Duckle’s advances.  He wondered if she suspected him of having been Lady Duckle’s lover....  Evelyn was thinking entirely of Lady Duckle herself, trying to divine the real woman that was behind all this talk of great men and social notabilities.  One phrase let drop seemed to let in some light on the mystery.  Talking of her, Lady Duckle said that it was only necessary to know what road we wanted to walk in to succeed, and instantly Lady Duckle appeared to her as one who had never selected a road.  She seemed to have walked a little way on all roads, and her face expressed a life of many wanderings, straying from place to place.  There was nothing as she said, worth doing that she had not done, but she had clearly accomplished nothing.  As she watched her she feared, though she could not say what she feared.  At bottom it was a suspicion of the deteriorating influence that Lady Duckle would exercise, must exercise, upon her—­for were they not going to live together for years?  And this companionship would be necessarily based on subterfuge and deceit.  She would have to talk to her of her friendship for Owen.  She could never speak of Owen to Lady Duckle as her lover.  But as Evelyn listened to this pleasant, garrulous woman talking, and talking very well, about music and literature, she could not but feel that she liked her, and that her easy humour and want of principle would make life comfortable and careless.  She was not a saint; she could not expect a saint to chaperon her; nor did she want a saint.  At that moment her spirits rose.  She wanted Owen, and she loved him the more for the tact he had shown in finding Lady Duckle for her.  She accepted the good lady’s faults with reckless enthusiasm, and when they got back to the hotel she took the first occasion to whisper that she liked Lady Duckle and was sure they’d get on very well together.