Yes. I knew all about her. The distress of Mr. and Mrs. Fyne—especially of Mrs. Fyne—was so great that they would have shared it with anybody almost—not belonging to their circle of friends. I happened to be at hand—that was all.
“You understand that I am not their friend. I am only a holiday acquaintance.”
“She was not very much upset?” queried Flora de Barral, meaning, of course, Mrs. Fyne. And I admitted that she was less so than her husband—and even less than myself. Mrs. Fyne was a very self-possessed person which nothing could startle out of her extreme theoretical position. She did not seem startled when Fyne and I proposed going to the quarry.
“You put that notion into their heads,” the girl said.
I advanced that the notion was in their heads already. But it was much more vividly in my head since I had seen her up there with my own eyes, tempting Providence.
She was looking at me with extreme attention, and murmured:
“Is that what you called it to them? Tempting . . . ”
“No. I told them that you were making up your mind and I came along just then. I told them that you were saved by me. My shout checked you . . . ” She moved her head gently from right to left in negation . . . “No? Well, have it your own way.”
I thought to myself: She has found another issue. She wants to forget now. And no wonder. She wants to persuade herself that she had never known such an ugly and poignant minute in her life. “After all,” I conceded aloud, “things are not always what they seem.”
Her little head with its deep blue eyes, eyes of tenderness and anger under the black arch of fine eyebrows was very still. The mouth looked very red in the white face peeping from under the veil, the little pointed chin had in its form something aggressive. Slight and even angular in her modest black dress she was an appealing and—yes—she was a desirable little figure.