“Yes, of course. Where did you run into her?”
“Oh, I see a lot of her. She runs a Domestic Employment Agency in Shaftesbury Avenue now, and I have to go there about once a fortnight to get a new maid. She supplied Jane.”
“Is Cynthia’s husband coming with her this afternoon?”
“No. I wanted it to be simply us four. Do you know him? But of course you don’t. This is his first visit to England.”
“I know his poetry. He’s quite a celebrity. Cynthia’s lucky.”
They had made their way into the drawing-room, a gruesome little apartment full of all those antimacassars, wax flowers, and china dogs inseparable from the cheaper type of London furnished house. Eve, though the exterior of Number Eighteen should have prepared her for all this, was unable to check a slight shudder as she caught the eye
