They walked together to the gates in silence.
Across the road the mortuary chapel opened its big iron doors to let a common Roman funeral pass out. Rose shuddered, and turned wide eyes of terror on Léon. “Oh!” she said, “How can God let anybody die!”
He put her into a carriage, soothing her as best he could, but his own hands trembled. He had not realized how serious this affair was going to be.
It was as serious as death.
CHAPTER V
The Hotel le Roy became a place for consultations. Everybody interviewed everybody else. The hall, the stuffy red salon, the tiny, damp garden, even the lift became indispensable for hurried conversations, but of course none of them had the least result. Léon, from the moment of his engagement, had taken rooms at another hotel--this was at once more convenable and also much more convenient. His French relatives were furious. He let them consume their fury among themselves, and told them when he had to see them, that their interest in his affairs was charming.
The Pinsents were all trying to be large-minded, uninsular and modern, but they didn’t like it.
Mr. Pinsent made a false start. He told Mrs. Pinsent that the engagement was out of the question. Mrs. Pinsent suggested his seeing Rose for himself and talking it all out. Mr. Pinsent refused hastily, clinging to the one plank of masculine security. “Aren’t you the child’s mother?” he demanded. Mrs. Pinsent made no attempt to deny this salient fact. She merely said, “I’m afraid Rose will say she wants to see you about it.” Mr. Pinsent knew what that meant. If he saw Rose he was lost. But as a matter of fact, he was lost already, without seeing Rose. Mrs. Pinsent had lost him.
After Mr. Pinsent had finished saying that the engagement was all nonsense and that he wouldn’t hear of it for a moment, she said he was perfectly right, but it wasn’t as if Léon was an Italian, was it? Paris was really not at all far from London when you came to think of it, and Léon was most obliging, and dressed quite like an Englishman, “and after all,” she finished, “we haven’t anything against him, have we? He told me himself he wasn’t a good Roman Catholic.”
In the end Mr. Pinsent had to see Rose, and after this he agreed to a further interview with Léon.