II
I perfectly well understood Derry's scruple about going to Ker Annic. It was the kind of scruple I should have liked a son of mine to have. Except as a husband he had no footing in that house, and except as a husband he refused to enter it. I think he would have given much to have been able to say that he never had set foot in it, but that milk was spilt.
But Jennie would never be torn from his side, and the chances were that Madge would not now be torn from Jennie's. So it looked as if either Alec must return to Dinard alone or else stay with us at the Poste and make the best of it.
Half an hour before lunch Madge had done an odd thing. She had called me away for a moment from Alec's side, and had asked me in which house in the Rue de la Cordonnerie I had found them. She had also wanted to know Madame Carguet's name. Then she had gone off.... I had seen her embrace of Jennie on her return. Her hand now once more stole to Jennie's as, with Alec's departure, we continued to sit at the table.
Again Derry sighed, but I think it was a little wilfully that he dwelt on the gloomier side, and that it was not altogether unmixed despair. We do allow ourselves these little luxuries at eighteen or thereabouts.
"Well, I've made a lot of bother," he sighed.
Madge was half cross, half consoling. "Oh, I expect it will come out all right in the end," she said impatiently. "He'll come round presently."
It began to look as if she herself had already come more than half-way round. And, now that Alec and his thundercloud had gone, a waiter ventured to advance.
"Si on peut désservir, Madame——"