“You speak for yourself, Giles. There are others besides you. You have no right to speak for them.”
She had his back against the wall, and Giles knew it. The worst of it was that she knew it, too.
“I can answer for them. I told you I could. I told you that Toppie was so fond of you that she’d feel as I do.”
To this, after a moment’s silence, Alix only said in a voice suddenly grown sombre, “I do not blame you, Giles.”
“I hope you don’t blame your mother,” said Giles.
There before them went madame Vervier, her white, heelless feet hardly seeming, in their beautiful tread, to touch the grass she passed over. They had no glimpse of her face. She left them in their privacy, feeling so secure that their privacy, since it was in his hands, could only be for her benefit. How deeply madame Vervier had read his heart yesterday! How clearly she had seen that all that he asked was to show her beauty to her child and to help her, always, in hiding from Alix the pitiful handful of dust that, in her truth to him, she had displayed! “I hope you don’t blame her,” he repeated, for Alix had made no reply, and, glancing at her now, and seeing her eyes bent down, he guessed that at his question they had filled with tears.
“It would be strange, wouldn’t it, Alix,” he said gently, “if it were I who had to defend your mother to you.”
“Very strange, Giles,” said Alix in a low voice.
“It’s all for love of you,” said Giles; and in spite of the handful of dust he knew that this was the fundamental truth about madame Vervier—“because of what she thinks best for you.”
“But may one never be a judge of that oneself?” said Alix.