The sound of a motor horn interrupted her reverie, and she saw that a big open car, with a green body, had turned the corner and was about to stop at her door.  An instant later anger burned in her heart, for she saw that the car was driven by Rose Stribling.  Even a glimpse of that flaunting pink hollyhock of a woman was sufficient to ruffle the placid current of Corinna’s thoughts.  Could she never forget?  Must she, who had long ago ceased to love the man, still be enslaved to resentment against the woman?

With an ample grace, Mrs. Stribling descended from the car, and crossed the pavement to the flagged walk which led to the white door of the old print shop.  In her trimly fitting dress of blue serge, with her small straw hat ornamented by stiff black quills, she looked fresher, harder, more durably glazed than ever.  A slight excess, too deep a carmine in her smooth cheeks, too high a polish on her pale gold hair, too thick a dusk on her lashes; this was the only flaw that one could detect in her appearance.  If men liked that sort of thing, and they apparently did, Corinna reflected, then they could scarcely complain of an emphasis on perfection.

“I’ve just got back,” began Rose Stribling in a tone as soft as her metallic voice could produce.  “It’s been an age since I’ve seen you—­not since the night of that stupid dinner at the Berkeleys’, and I’m so much interested in the news I have heard.”

For a minute Corinna stared at her.  “Yes, my shop has been very successful,” she answered, after a pause in which she tried and failed to think of a reply that would sound more disdainful.  “If you are looking for prints, I can show you some very good ones.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that.”  Mrs. Stribling appeared genuinely amused by the mistake.  “I am not looking for prints—­to tell the truth I shouldn’t know one if I saw it.  I mean your engagement, of course.  There isn’t anybody in the world who admires John Benham more than I do.  I always say of him that he is the only man I know who will sacrifice himself for a principle.  All his splendid record in the army—­when he was over age too—­and then the way he behaved about that corporation!  I never understood just why he did it—­I’m sure I could never bring myself to refuse so much money,—­but that doesn’t keep me from admiring him.”  For a minute she looked at Corinna with a smile which seemed as permanent as the rest of her surface, while she discreetly sharpened her wits for the stab which was about to be dealt.  “I can’t tell you how surprised I was to hear you had announced your engagement.  You know we were so sure that he was going to marry Alice Rokeby after she got her divorce.  Of course nobody knew.  It was just gossip, and you and I both know how absurd gossip can be.”

So this was why she had stopped!  Corinna flinched from the thrust even while she told herself that there was no shadow of truth in the old rumour, that malice alone had prompted Rose Stribling to repeat it.  In a woman like that, an incorrigible coquette, every relation with her own sex would be edged with malice.