Esmé was still in her wrapper of silk and lace, when Lady Blakeney came to her next day. Came, white and excited, her eyes blazing, her face tense. For half an hour Esmé sat almost silent, listening to an outpouring of plot and plan. The weak, flighty woman developed undreamt-of powers of organization. Esmé wanted money, freedom. Oh! it had often been done before. She flung out its simplicity. Away in some remote part of the Continent the child which was to come should be born as a Blakeney. What was easier than a change of names? "See, Esmé--I'll give you a thousand a year always. Honour! Think of it! Five hundred pounds every six months, and you and Bertie can be happy when he comes back. And I--it will save me. We'll go away together in the autumn; we are always together. We'll go without maids. Oh--do--do!" Esmé flung up her pretty head. "I'll do it," she said, "but I must have a doctor. I must not die." "A doctor to attend Lady Blakeney. Why not? Strange servants, a strange place, who would know?" Denise remembered everything. "Yet it is wonderful how people do know," said Esmé, shrewdly, half afraid now that she had agreed; wondering what might happen. Yet she looked round her flat with a little sigh of relief. She could live her merry, careless life, live it more easily than before, and she did not want a child. She hated children, hated their responsibility. "Some day," said Esmé, "I won't mind; then there can be another." May had given way to a dismal June. Cold winds and showers swept over the world. Flowers were dragged from grates and fires put in. Esmé had lighted hers; sat over it, as her husband came in; they were lunching out. He hung over her, delighting in her soft beauty, crying out at her pale cheeks. "You're tired, girlie; we're always out. And now that I must leave you alone you'll do much more." She leant back against him, ruffling her cloud of fair hair. "We're absolutely happy, aren't we, Bertie? I'll be here when you come. I can let the flat until the spring, and you must leave that stupid army and live here all summer in dear London." He held her close, sat silent for a time. "I was at Evie's yesterday," he said. "Eve Gresham's my cousin. I saw her boy." "Horrid little things at that age," said Esmé, unsympathetically. "It wasn't--it was fat and bonny; and Eve is so proud of it. If we had a sonny, Butterfly, you and I, I'd like him to be like Eve's." Esmé sat astonished. Bertie wishing for a third in their lives. Bertie! knowing the difference it would make. She jumped up, almost angrily. "If we had, we couldn't hunt, or do half what we do," she said. "And you've got me, Bertie. Do you want more?" She began to cry suddenly, broke down, overwrought by her morning's plot, by this new idea of Carteret's.