“No.”
“It is as I thought.”
“What do you mean, Aunt?”
She pounded on the floor with her cane. She was almost impotent now and spent her days in an armchair, from which she had to be lifted to bed by two servants. And her temper was short.
“Don’t be a fool! I am warning you. You’d better ask Philibert. Don’t tell him I told you. Oh well—do if you like, what is it to me, to have him angry?”
I was very much disturbed but didn’t go to Philibert and ask him what he was up to, because I wanted to gain time, and it didn’t occur to me as possible that he would really commit himself without consulting me. I wanted to gain time for Jinny herself. I had hopes for her of what seemed to me the happiest of all solutions.
Philibert thinks to this day that the poor little abortive romance of Jinny and Sam Chilbrook was my doing. Poor sweet babies. I had had no hand in their falling in love. It had seemed to me to be the work of God and I had kept out of it.
Sam had come to Paris from the army for the peace conference. He was attached to the President’s suite. I had known his father and his mother and his grandfather and grandmother. Every one knew the Chilbrooks. They lived in Washington and Philadelphia, and the men of the family had a taste for the diplomatic service. The grandfather you remember was the American Ambassador in London, years ago. They were very well off.
Sam was a romantic, with a humorous grin and the nicest voice in the world. He had nice young eyes, and freckles on his nose. He liked to do things in a hurry. He met Jinny at luncheon at the American Embassy and fell in love with her at first sight.
“Please ask me to tea alone,” he said to me after lunch. “I want to talk to you. I want to marry your daughter”—and he cocked an eyebrow like a puppy.