I lifted my face from her curls.
“What is not true, my darling?”
“That you and Papa don’t love each other.” She kept her face buried. I felt her heart beating against me, a frail little gusty heart beating painfully. The room round us was very still, too still, no sound in it, only the felt sound of our heart beats, and the clock ticking on the mantelpiece. I must speak, I must lie to her, and as the words left my lips I knew that they were involving me in endless deceptions, in a long, long ghastly comedy, in countless humiliations.
“No, darling, it’s not true.”
Her little arms tightened round my neck.
“They said—” she whispered.
“Who said, my pet?”
“Some ladies. I heard them talking. They said, they said you would never forgive him.” I felt her body trembling, and I too trembled, and as I realized that I had thought her incapable of intense feeling I felt deeply ashamed. “What did they mean, Mamma, tell me, what did they mean?”
“Nothing, nothing.” I must have spoken harshly. “They were mistaken, they were speaking of some one else.”
She lifted her face then and looked at me, her eyes were wide and accusing. “Oh, no, Mummy, they said your names, they said Jane and Philibert, your two names. It was at Aunt Claire’s. Dicky and I were just behind the door, and I pulled him away so he wouldn’t hear any more, but he only laughed at me and said, ‘Every one knows your parents detest each other’—in French, you know, ‘Tout le monde sait que tes parents se détestent,’ and then I kicked him.”