Esmé recalled the breakfasts at Coombe Regis, at Harlands. She flung out at the maids. Ordered new dishes angrily. Oh, it was hateful not to have things right. Her old gaiety had left her. She would have laughed a year ago and boiled eggs on a spirit lamp. Bertie at last, running up, catching her in his arms, holding her close. "Esmé, my dear old butterfly. My sweetheart. Oh, it's good to be back again here with you. Breakfast, Es, I'm starving." So big and boyish and loving. She clung to him and found discontent even there. She had cheated her man. There was a secret to be hidden from him for ever. And where were all the comforts she had dreamt of with her income? Where were they? "Breakfast." Esmé rang the bell. "Cook is grilling the bacon, mem. It will take ten minutes." So Bertie had to wait, and then eat cold eggs and burnt bacon, and drink stewed tea. But he was happy. "Extravagance," he said. "My silken-winged butterfly, that's a new gown of fluff and laces." "You don't expect me to have all last year's, do you?" Esmé almost snapped, then leant against him. He held her closely, loving the warm suppleness of her body, the scent of her burnished hair, his lips were hot on the satin smoothness of her skin. "But, Es sweetheart, you're thinner," he whispered, "and looking sadly. We'll have a week away, just you and I, in Paris. You must be rich now with no house all this winter." Esmé slipped away from him and fidgeted as she lighted a cigarette. "Oh, Bertie, you've seen about the accident. You're heir now." "The place is entailed," he said. "It's worth nothing. But the old man's money is his own. He may leave it to me. If we had a boy he might, no doubt he would." Esmé flushed scarlet, turning away. The cold day grew colder. Try as she would, the old happy intimacy, their careless happy youth, would not come back. Before, she had told Bertie everything. Now if he knew, if he knew. Her husband seemed to have grown older, graver, to be less boyish. He talked of one or two things as extravagant. They discussed Aldershot and he spoke of lodgings. Houses were impossible there. Esmé grew petulant. Lodgings, she had seen them. Chops for dinner and cold meat and salad for lunch. They must find a house. They'd heaps of money. They went out to luncheon, telephoned a table at the Berkeley, ordered their favourite dishes recklessly. Esmé came down in the Paris coat, open to show the blue and silver lining. "Butterfly! What a coat," her husband exclaimed at its beauty. "Where did you get it?" Esmé hesitated, told half the truth. "Denise gave it to me," she said slowly. "You see I did a lot for her." Bertie was his old self then, foolishly merry. They must go up Bond Street and order a limousine to go with the coat. It couldn't sit in taxis. When it was off in the restaurant he saw the cunning beauty of a Paris frock, a black one, the old pendant of emeralds gleaming against real lace.