“Then you will perhaps have a long drive with me, chère madame,” said André.
“If Robert may come, too. I do not like to leave him behind.”
How easy she made it for André to pretend that the relinquishment of the tête-à-tête was a favour he granted her with difficulty!
“But certainly.—Since you ask it! Certainly he must come.—Does he still suffer this morning with his head, do you know?”
“I fear so. Albertine has taken him his breakfast to his room. That is a bad sign. A drive will do him good.”
“He will not like being rained on, you know,” André smiled.
He was so glad that he was not to be alone with madame Vervier that he dared thus embroider his feint of disappointment.
“We can shelter him,” said madame Vervier.
“While Giles converts mademoiselle Alix to the methods of the British Empire,” said André, sitting with his back to the window where the sunlight fell about him and buttering his roll with a curious light crispness of touch, as if he were painting a picture. There was something in the play of the long, fine hands with the bread that Giles was never to forget; something cruel, controlled. He read in the young Frenchman’s face the signs of an exasperation mastered with difficulty.
“But the method of the British Empire is unconscious,” said madame Vervier. “It seeks no converts.”