"Mostly it's imagination. That and
leisure, George. When I was a young man I was kept pretty busy. So were
you. Even then--!"
What puzzled me more particularly was the queer trick of my memory
that had never recalled anything vital of Beatrice whatever when I
met Garvell again that had, indeed, recalled nothing except a boyish
antagonism and our fight. Now when my senses were full of her, it seemed
incredible that I could ever have forgotten....
III
"Oh, Crikey!" said my aunt, reading a letter behind her coffee-machine.
"HERE'S a young woman, George!"
We were breakfasting together in the big window bay at Lady Grove that
looks upon the iris beds; my uncle was in London.
I sounded an interrogative note and decapitated an egg.
"Who's Beatrice Normandy?" asked my aunt. "I've not heard of her
before."
"She the young woman?"
"Yes. Says she knows you. I'm no hand at old etiquette, George, but
her line is a bit unusual. Practically she says she's going to make her
mother--"
"Eh? Step-mother, isn't it?"
"You seem to know a lot about her.
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