“Hannah,” Barbara said almost hesitantly as they passed between the park gates, “you were not serious over tea, were you? About what you plan to do, I mean.”

“But of course I am serious,” Hannah said. “I am no longer either an unmarried girl or a married lady. I am that thoroughly enviable female creature-a widow of wealth and superior social standing. I am even still quite young. And widows of good ton are almost expected to take a lover, you know-provided he is also of good ton, of course. And preferably unmarried.”

Barbara sighed.

“I hoped you were joking with me,” she said, “though I feared you were not. You have grown into the manners and morals of this fast world you married into, I see. I disapprove of what you intend. I disapprove of the morality of it, Hannah. But more important, I disapprove of your rashness. You are not as heartless or as-oh, what is the word?-as jaded, as blase as you believe yourself to be. You are capable of enormous affection and love. An affair can bring you nothing but dissatisfaction at best, heartbreak at worst.”

Hannah chuckled. “Do you see the crowds of people up ahead?” she said. “Any one of them would tell you, Babs, that the Duchess of Dunbarton does not have a heart to be broken.”

“They do not know you,” Barbara said. “I do. Nothing I say will deter you, of course. And so I will say only this. I will love you anyway, Hannah. I will always love you. Nothing you can do will make me stop.”

“I do wish you would stop, though,” Hannah said, “or the ton will be treated to the interesting spectacle of the Duchess of Dunbarton in tears and wrapped in the arms of her companion.”

Barbara snorted inelegantly, and they both laughed yet again.