“Ah, it is the very dawn of loveliness, that song,” said André, and in the words Giles felt the expression of a perhaps subconscious train of thought. “It is so young. It is all dew and candour. You must hear it, monsieur Giles.” The young Frenchman wandered about the room, his hands in his pockets. “Of the time of your Chaucer,” he went on. “Our countries then had much the same heart. It was the time when our great cathedrals rose and miracles were as plentiful as turtle-doves.” He paused before the mantelpiece and took up one of the photographs set there. “This is of you, mademoiselle Alix?”
Madame Vervier had turned from the window, and, still holding Alix, she approached him.
“Yes; it is of me. It was taken in England,” said Alix.
Giles had not noticed the photograph, but he noticed a change in Alix’s voice. He, too, drew near, and saw the little snap-shot of Alix with the dogs at the edge of the birch-wood. But it was in a frame delicately embroidered in blue and silver, and he asked in all innocence, “Where did the pretty frame come from, Alix?”
“Toppie made it,” said Alix. The alteration in her voice was now evident. He now knew why, and fell to instant silence.
“Toppie? What is Toppie?” André de Valenbois asked, laughing a little and looking at Alix over her photograph. “That is a name I have never heard before.”
“It is le petit nom of mademoiselle Enid Westmacott,” said madame Vervier, in tones sad and gentle. “She was the fiancée of monsieur Giles’s brother, our friend, killed in battle, of whom you have often heard me speak. Mademoiselle Toppie”—how strangely the childish syllables fell from her untroubled lips—“made the little frame for me as a Christmas gift. Had you not seen it, monsieur Giles? It is exquisite. I was infinitely touched by her thought of me.”
“Ah. It is, indeed, exquisite,” André murmured, while Giles found no words. “One feels that only an exquisite person could have made it.—Yes, certainly I have heard you speak of monsieur Giles’s brother, chère madame. But I did not know that he was betrothed.”
He spoke in a respectful tone, holding the frame, but for all his resource and grace of bearing, filled, Giles suddenly felt, with a conflict of thoughts. Did he know of Owen? Did he accept his place, in the succession? Was he jealous in retrospect; or, like monsieur de Maubert, in retrospect complaisant? And that there was something to be kept up—or was it for him, Giles, that she kept it up?—was manifest to him from the deliberate adequacy with which madame Vervier advanced to meet the occasion, while Alix, her eyes turned away from them all, fixed her gaze upon the sky.
“She is, indeed, exquisite. I can say it, monsieur Giles, although I have never met her. It is not only from Alix’s letters that I know her. Before that. Your brother talked of her always. She was always in his thoughts. One could not know him well, or care for him as we did, without coming to know and care for his beautiful Toppie. It was a great devotion,” said madame Vervier, and her voice, in its sadness, sweetness, and decorum, seemed to lay a votive offering before Toppie and her bereavement. “I have never known a greater.” But as she thus offered her wreath and bowed her head, Giles saw a deep colour rise slowly in Alix’s averted face.