Free Walk with Care by Patricia Wentworth

Asphodel called herself a Seer. …
    Mimosa looked at her through long tinted lashes. Behind them her eyes were as bright and hard as a lizard’s.
    â€œDid Gilbert tell you he’d been to her? I thought he told you everything.”
    â€œHow do you know he went to her, Mimosa?”
    The lashes flicked up and down again.
    â€œDarling, I met him on the steps. I was going in, and he was coming out. My dear, you should have seen him—too taken aback!”
    Rosalind roused herself to a counter-attack.
    â€œBut that must have been nearly two years ago. You can’t mean you’re still doing anything you were doing as long ago as that! How d émodé of you! I should as soon expect to see you with last year’s hair.”
    â€œDarling, you’re too witty, but just a tiny bit unkind. I do feel the world would be a better place if we were all kinder to each other. Asphodel says so. And what you said just now was really a little bit unkind, because though we change the expression, we needn’t change in our devotion to the ideal. Such a beautiful thought, don’t you think?”
    â€œAsphodel’s?” said Rosalind.
    â€œToo sweet—isn’t it?”
    Rosalind began to feel a good deal of curiosity. There must be something remarkable about a woman who could keep Mimosa Vane on a lead for nearly two years. Six months as a rule saw the rise and fall of an idol, or the ebb and flow of a craze. And Gilbert—what had taken Gilbert to the woman who was neither a fortuneteller nor a clairvoyante? But Gilbert had said, “I’ve been to a fortune-teller.” Why had Asphodel told him that he would go round the world? She began to have a strong desire to see the woman who had told Gilbert that he would go round the world. She said quickly,
    â€œWhere does she live?”
    â€œAsphodel? In Tilt Street—Number One Tilt Street. My dear, if you want to see her, I’ll take you. She needn’t know who you are or anything like that.”
    Rosalind felt a sharp revulsion.
    â€œOh no,” she said. “I don’t know why I asked. I don’t want to see her in the least—I hate that sort of thing.”
    â€œWell, darling, that’s just as you like. But she’s too marvellous really.” She produced a mirror and a lipstick and brightened the carmine of her lips. “Mouse Hammond went to her, and she told her not to set foot in a car for at least three months, or she’d have an accident. And of course Mouse didn’t listen, and only a week later she had the most nerve-racking smash.”
    Rosalind laughed. She was pleased to find that she could laugh.
    â€œIf Mouse’s driving is anything like it used to be!” she said, and laughed again. “She took me down to Hurlingham once, and it was like the man with the Channel crossing—the first ten minutes I thought I was going to die, and after that I only wanted to get it over and be dead.”
    â€œDear Mouse!” said Mimosa. “She’s quite well again, and the scar doesn’t really make her any plainer than she was before. She’s a darling thing, but you wouldn’t think a man would go off the deep end about her like Emery Stevens has.”
    Rosalind wrinkled her brow.
    â€œEmery Stevens!”
    â€œDarling, how too back number! He’s it. Everybody’s on their knees to him to paint them. He’ll have to get rid of his wife—too impossibly domestic. But why poor darling Mouse with three stitches in her nose? Why, Vinnie Hambleton is quite off her head about him—and she’ll have well over a million when her grandfather dies.”
    She put away lipstick and mirror, rose, and swayed across the table to touch cheek-bones with Rosalind.
    â€œDarling, it’s been divine to see you, but I must go on—cocktails at Vinnie’s—a sherry party with Len and Cruffles—dinner with the Monties—some sort of