Chapter 33

This physical contact with Lady Roehampton was highly distasteful to Lady Clementina; through the medium of her hand she became aware of the extreme softness of Sylvia’s thigh under the thin silk of her dress, communicating to her a suggestion of impropriety which was immediately associated in her mind with the stories familiar to her—stories of Sylvia’s own affairs as of the fast set in which she lived. What was it that Lady Porteviot always called her? pronouncing the a’s thin, with her north-country accent, “Tha…