“Oh, yes, I remember. She spends the winters at Cannes.”
“She enjoys her life there. She plays tennis beautifully and has so many friends, as perhaps Captain Owen told you. But I know that she misses me. I have always been with her there before. I was with her, you know, when Captain Owen met us.”
“I should rather say I did know,” said Giles. “We heard all about your kindness to him, you may be sure. You may be sure we are a very grateful family.” Giles spoke with heartiness, and though she felt something a little forced in it there was nothing forced in his evident kindness towards herself. They were talking happily. As they had talked last night at dinner.
“And you may be sure we heard all about you,” said Alix, smiling across at him. “All about Ruth and Rosemary and Francis and Jack. What a large family you are. It must be very happy being so many.”
“I say!” laughed Giles, “you have a good memory! To get us in our order, too.”
“But how could I forget when he told us so much! We saw all your photographs so often. Only one does not get so clear an idea from photographs. I would not have known you from yours. And there was Toppie. After your mother, he talked most of all about Toppie. I shall see her, too, shall I not?”
It was as if she had struck him. The violent red that mounted to his face was echoed in Alix’s cheeks. It was as if, with her innocent words, she had struck him, and in the silence that followed them, while he gazed at her, and she, helplessly, gazed back, she saw that what had underlain the confusion of yesterday had simply been suffering. She had laid it bare. She was looking at it now.
He tried to master it; to conceal it; in a moment he stammered: “Oh, he talked most about Toppie, did he?”
“Was she not his betrothed?” asked Alix in a feeble voice. She felt exhausted. He had struck her, too.
“Of course she was,” said Giles, and his eyes now lifted from her face and fixed themselves over her head on Maman’s dressing-case.