“Of course I do,” she responded. “Isn’t it what I’ve been saying all this time?”
“Then honestly I don’t see what either you or I can do but stand by. She knows we’re there right enough, both of us. She can depend on Fred too, she knows that. But it seems to me that until she comes to us we’ve got to leave her alone to fight out whatever the trouble is in her own way. I think you are right—there is trouble. But we can’t force her confidence and we should do no good if we did. I’m afraid you won’t think that much help.” He looked at her with some kindness. “But I believe it is quite sound advice.”
“It’s dreadful to feel like a stranger with one’s own child,” complained Mrs. North. “It makes me perfectly miserable. Of course I don’t think a father feels the same as a mother.”
A shadow fell across the strip of sunlight coming in from the window. A gay voice broke the sequence of her complaint.
“Oh, here you are!” it said.
Both of them looked up hastily, almost guiltily. Violet Riversley stood on the gravel pathway outside. A gay and gallant figure, slim and straight in her favourite white. The sun shone on the smooth coiled satin of her dark hair, on the whiteness of her wonderful skin. Her golden eyes danced as she crossed the step of the French window.
“I felt in my bones you would be having a party this afternoon,” she said. “So I put Fred and myself into the car, and here we are!”
She looked from one to the other and they looked at her, momentarily bereft of speech. For here was the old Violet, gay with over-brimming life and mirth, the beautiful irresistible hoyden of the days before the war, before Dick Carey had died, suddenly back again as it were. And now, and now only, did either of them realize to the full the difference between her and the Violet they had just been discussing.
“What is the matter with you both?” she cried. “You look as if you were plotting dark and desperate deeds! And Mansfield is nearly in tears under the beech-tree because he can’t arrange the chairs to his satisfaction without you.” She looked at her mother. “He says”—she looked at her father and bubbled with mirth—“the trenches have spoilt his sense of the artistic! And he says he is a champion at croquet now himself. He won all the competitions at V.A.D. hospital. Do you think we ought to ask him to play this afternoon?”
“My dear Violet——” began Mrs. North, smitten by the horror of the suggestion.