They left the woods of Les Chardonnerets behind them. Before them was the great curve of the cliff and the empty sky.
“So, you see me punished,” said madame Vervier.
Giles walked beside her and found no word to say.
“Even you, stern moralist as you are,” madame Vervier pursued, “could hardly have foreseen such a punishment.—To know that I have ruined my child’s best chance of happiness; all that I could have hoped for her.—To know that she is suffering because of me.”
“No, I didn’t think it would come like that,” Giles murmured.
“Ah, but it has come in the other way, too,” she said, looking round at him in the pale shadow of her sunshade;—“though I have forestalled that calamity, and a calamity forestalled is always endurable. André and I are parted.” Madame Vervier continued to look at him steadily. “I have told him that this Summer is the end. He still believes—or tries to believe—that he loves me; but he consents. I knew that he would consent.”
Giles walked beside her filled with a confusion of pain and pity. Never before had madame Vervier openly admitted her relation to André; admitted it to Owen’s brother. “He doesn’t look like partings,” was all he found, most helplessly, to say.
“Partings, at his age, are the preludes to beginnings; and André has the gift of looks. He is, perhaps, not quite at ease; but he has wisdom—our French wisdom, Giles. His mother, already, is arranging a marriage for him. As soon as our rupture is definitely known, he will be able to settle himself in life;—se ranger,” said madame Vervier. “And he will be glad to be settled; he will be glad to be married to a charming young girl whom he has known since boyhood;—a young girl,” madame Vervier continued in her steady voice, “whom your madame Marigold met when she came to France last Spring.”
“You know all about that, then?” Giles muttered.
“How should I not know?” madame Vervier returned.