When they were sitting in the tonnelle that evening, however, just before the falling of the brief Italian dusk, Miss Stellenthorpe made enquiries to which more detailed answers were necessary.
"And what of Philip—what of your father, Lily?"
Lily answered as fully as was compatible with that old obsession that it was disloyal to present one's near relations to the gaze of another in any aspect save that particular one in which they might choose to regard themselves. She knew that Philip often described himself as a broken man, and conscientiously did her best to put a picture of a broken man before Aunt Clo.
"Aha!" said Aunt Clo, and "Ecco!" and nodded with deliberation, as though merely acquiescing in the recital of a state of affairs that had long been known to her.
"Nous nous aimons de loin," she said with resignation. "It doesn't do to remove the crutches before a lame man is ready to walk. I myself have stood without a prop all my life, and I wanted to see your father and mother strong and straight and unsupported, too. But perhaps I was hard and hasty. I was young. They clutched at the artificial supports that I tried to make them spurn—they resented the council of perfection.... Well, well ... I thank whatever gods there be, that I myself have learnt to stand upright and face the sunlight."
Aunt Clo drew up her tall person as she spoke, and threw back her head in a gesture expressive of freedom and gallantry.
Later on, when Lily and she had dinner together, Miss Stellenthorpe became less metaphorical and more colloquial.
Her appearance was a surprise to her niece. She had discarded the blue jersey and the knickerbockers for an admirably fitting drapery of flame-coloured brocade, closely following the lines of her fine figure, and a Greek fillet encircled her head. Her arms were bare to the shoulder and Lily, glancing surreptitiously downwards, saw that she wore flame-coloured stockings and shoes that were laced sandal-wise.
"Certainly, I descend to the conventions in the evening," cried Aunt Clo, not altogether truthfully, as her gaze followed Lily's. "Would you believe it, Lily, that I shocked Genazzano profoundly when I first lived here!"
Lily felt that she could believe it easily.