“My diary,” she explained. “It’s foolish to keep one, isn’t it?”
Her intonation so obviously called for an affirmative that the Prophet felt constrained to reply,—
“Very foolish indeed.”
She smiled with pleasure.
“I’m so glad you think so. Ah—exactly a year and a half.”
“You’ve been Miss Minerva Partridge?”
“Yes.”
“So long as that?”
“Yes, indeed. Mr. Vivian, during that time I have been leading a double life.”
The Prophet remembered the other double life beside the borders of the River Mouse, and began to wonder if he were acquainted with any human being who led a single one.
“Many people do that,” he remarked rather aimlessly.
Lady Enid looked vexed.
“I did not say I had a monopoly of the commodity,” she rejoined, evidently wishing that she had.
“Oh, no,” said the Prophet, making things worse; “one meets people who live double lives every day, I might almost say every hour.”
The clock had just struck four, and he had begun to think of five. Lady Enid’s pleasant plumpness began rapidly to disappear.
“I can’t say I do,” she said sharply, feeling that most of the gilt was being stripped off her sin.
She stopped in such obvious dissatisfaction that the Prophet, vaguely aware that he had made some mistake, said,—
“Please go on. I am so interested. Why have you led a double life for the last week and a half?”
“Year and a half, I said.”
“I mean year and a half.”
He forced his mobile features to assume a fixed expression of greedy, though rather too constant, curiosity. Lady Enid brightened up.
“Mr. Vivian,” she said, “many girls are born sensible-looking without wishing it.”
“Are they really? It never occurred to me.”
“Such things very seldom do occur to men. Now that places these girls in a very painful position. I was placed in this position as soon as I was born, or at least as soon as I began to look like anything at all. For babies really don’t.”
“That’s very true,” assented the Prophet, with more fervour.
“People continually said to me, ‘What a nice sensible girl you are’; or—’One always feels your Common sense’; or—’There’s nothing foolish about you, Enid, thank Heaven!’ The Chieftain relied upon me thoroughly. So did the tenants. So did everybody. You can understand that it became very trying?”
“Of course, of course.”
“It’s something to do with the shape of my eyebrows, the colour of my hair, the way I smile and that sort of thing.”
“No doubt it is.”
“Mr. Vivian, I’ll tell you now, that I’ve never felt sensible in all my life.”
“Really!” ejaculated the Prophet, still firmly holding all his features together in an unyielding expression of fixed curiosity.
“Never once, however great the provocation. And in my family, with the Chieftain, the provocation you can understand is exceptionally great.”