"Darling mother, you haven't any too many of them, have you?" she murmured; and she gave me, sidelong, as she left us, the prettiest half-comical, half-pitiful smile.
"She's amazing—she's amazing," said Mrs. Pallant as we looked at each other.
"Does she know what you've done?"
"She knows I've done something and she's making up her mind what it is. She'll satisfy herself in the course of the next twenty-four hours—if your nephew doesn't come back. I think I can promise you he won't."
"And won't she ask you?"
"Never!"
"Shan't you tell her? Can you sit down together in this summer-house, this divine day, with such a dreadful thing as that between you?"
My question found my friend quite ready. "Don't you remember what I told you about our relations—that everything was implied between us and nothing expressed? The ideas we have had in common—our perpetual worldliness, our always looking out for chances—are not the sort of thing that can be uttered conveniently between persons who like to keep up forms, as we both do: so that, always, if we've understood each other it has been enough. We shall understand each other now, as we've always done, and nothing will be changed. There has always been something between us that couldn't be talked about."
"Certainly, she's amazing—she's amazing," I repeated; "but so are you." And then I asked her what she had said to my boy.
She seemed surprised. "Hasn't he told you?"