“Yes. So your mother told me. I hope you’re not too sorry; for I’m so awfully glad,” said Giles.
Madame Vervier, with monsieur de Maubert beside her, and André de Valenbois with mademoiselle Fontaine, went on before them. They were taking Giles, on his last evening, to see a little château that lay in its woods near the coast, in the opposite direction from Allongeville. Giles knew that madame Vervier had arranged that he and Alix should go together and that she trusted him to uphold her cause as best he could. “It was what I wanted, you know,” he added.
Alix, as she heard him, fixed her eyes upon her mother’s form, rounding a green projection of the path, her white sunshade upon her shoulder. “It was most of all what Maman wanted, was it not, Giles?” she observed, with a faint, curious smile.
“Not at all,” said Giles. “You know how much I wanted it.”
“You will hardly make me believe,” said Alix, her lips keeping their smile, “that it was you who persuaded Maman rather than she you.”
“There was no question of persuasion. How could there have been? When we were both agreed from the first.”
“I wish I could understand what it was that made you agree so strongly,” said Alix after a slight silence. “Maman says that it is for my good to finish my studies in England, among such friends. That does not seem to me a sufficient reason. I could finish my studies in my own country; and I have good friends here.”
“She thinks, and so do I,” said Giles, “that we are the best friends you have. Isn’t that a sufficient reason?”
“It seems to me a reason for not taking advantage of such friends,” said Alix, startling him.
“But that is what good friends ask,” he said. “To be taken advantage of.”