Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/188

 my Will must have dropped the handkerchief and she was coming to tell me that she had picked it up.

“My dear, what makes you so energetic?,” I asked.

As a rule she insisted on lying in bed until all hours and having her breakfast brought to her there, making work for my unhappy servants.

“I want to know if you can tell me Hilary Butler’s address?,” she said.

“I’ve never heard it,” I told her. “How should I?”

“Apparently he came here yesterday. When I went down to get my bag, I found his gloves in the hall. But they only have his initials.”

I did wish that Phyllida had been less collected and businesslike! Hard, not daring to let herself go. . . I ought to have looked, I suppose, to see that he was leaving nothing behind, but one cannot think of everything. And now I knew that Phyllida would start all over again. ..

Yet one must expect an occasional relapse. ..

“I’ve never heard it,” I told her again.

She did not trouble to ask anything more. . . Just looked at me for a moment. I made