“I wish I liked her!” she murmured.
“Mrs. Talkett?”
“Yes—I should think better of myself if I did. And it might be useful. But I can’t—I can’t!”
Campton said within himself: “Oh, women——!”
For his own resentment had died out long ago. He could think of the affair now as one of hundreds such as happen to young men; he was even conscious of regarding it, in some unlit secret fold of himself, as a probable guarantee of George’s wanting to remain in Paris, another subterranean way of keeping him, should such be needed. Perhaps that was what Miss Anthony meant by saying that her liking Mrs. Talkett might be “useful.”
“Why shouldn’t he be with me?” the father persisted. “He and I were going off together when the war begun. I was defrauded of that—why shouldn’t I have him now?”
Miss Anthony smiled. “Well, for one thing, because of that very ‘pull’ you were speaking of.”
“Oh, the Brants, the Brants!” Campton glanced impatiently at the bill-of-fare, grumbled: “Déjeuner du jour, I suppose?” and went on: “Yes; I might have known it—he belongs to them. From the minute we got back, and I saw them at the station, with their motor waiting, and everything arranged as only money can arrange it, I knew I’d lost my boy again.” He stared moodily before him. “And yet if the war hadn’t come I should have got him back—I almost had.”
His companion still smiled, a little wistfully. She leaned over and laid her hand on his, under cover of the bill-of-fare. “You did get him back, John, forever and always, the day he exchanged into the infantry. Isn’t that enough?”
Campton answered her smile. “You gallant old chap, you!” he said; and they began to lunch.