“Yes.” He looked at his watch. “But I’m off to bed now. I promised the children to take them for an early canter tomorrow, before lessons, and I have to have my seven or eight hours of sleep to feel fit. I’m getting on, you see. Put out the lights when you come up.”
No; he wouldn’t talk about the war.
It was not long afterward that Mrs. Delane appealed to me to testify to Hayley’s perfection. She had come back from her last absence—a six weeks’ flutter at Newport—rather painfully subdued and pinched-looking. For the first time I saw in the corners of her mouth that middle-aged droop which has nothing to do with the loss of teeth. “How common-looking she’ll be in a few years!” I thought uncharitably.
“Perfect—perfect,” she insisted; and then, plaintively: “And yet—”
I echoed coldly: “And yet?”
“With the children, for instance. He’s everything to them. He’s cut me out with my own children.” She was half joking, half whimpering.
Presently she stole an eye-lashed look at me, and added: “And at times he’s so hard.”
“Delane?”
“Oh, I know you won’t believe it. But in business matters—have you never noticed? You wouldn’t admit it, I suppose. But there are times when one simply can’t move him.” We were in the library, and she glanced up at the breast-plated forbear. “He’s as hard to the touch as that.” She pointed to the steel convexity.
“Not the Delane I know,” I murmured, embarrassed by these confidences.