The first time she said ‘We’ of herself and Erle she felt a pang of guilt; by the tenth or so time she had to say it in answer to questions her qualms of conscience were less and the pretence that they planned a future together so much less of a sham. Sometimes she even allowed herself the fantasy of ‘If he were really in love with me, the things I’m doing and saying in regard to him would be true’—which lent her a mirage of peace while she indulged it, though she hated herself for doing so.Seemingly, if Erle had ever had any such misgivings he had quashed them even before she had. He played the lover, the happily engaged man to perfection. In order that Ruth should not be harried at her flat by reporters he called a press confrontation at his office, where he parried awkward questions about the secrecy surrounding his courtship, put his arm round Ruth and kissed her as warmly as the enthusiasm of the photographers demanded, and made a good story of their original teenage meeting in the fog of an English winter day.All of which was reported lovingly, with romantic trimmings; with, even in Lo Sussurro and its kind, never a backward glance at the sour insinuations of a week or so ago.What were Stella Parioli’s reactions to Erle’s engagement Ruth did not know.
