He was sitting, very tired, in his big chair. Jean's little hand was in his.
"Poor Hilda," he said at last, looking into the fire, as if he saw there the vision of his lost dreams.
"Oh, no—" Jean protested.
"Yes, my dear, there is so much that is good in the worst of us, and so much that is bad in the best—and perhaps she struggles with temptations which never assail you."
Jean's lips were set in an obstinate line. "Daddy was always saying things like that about Hilda."
"Well, we men are apt to be charitable—to beauty in distress." The General was keenly and humorously aware that if Hilda had been ugly, he might not have been so anxious about the pink parasol. He might not, indeed, have pitied her at all!
And now in Jean's heart grew up a sharply defined fear of Hilda. In the old days there had been cordial dislike, jealousy, perhaps, but never anything like this. The question persisted in the back of her mind. If Hilda went to France, would she see Daddy and weave her wicked spells. To find the General melting into pity, in spite of the chaos which Hilda's treachery had created, was to wonder if Daddy, too, might melt.
She wrote to Derry about it.
"I would try and see her if I knew what to say, but when I even think of it I am scared. I never liked her, and I feel now as if I should be glad to pin together the pages of my memory of her, as I pinned together the pages of one of my story books when I was a little girl. There was a shark under water in the picture and two men were trying to get away from him. I hated that picture and shivered every time I looked at it, so I stuck in a pin and shut out the sight of it.
"Your father has had two letters from her since the day when he saw her in the Park. Bronson always brings the mail to me, and you know what a distinctive hand Hilda writes, there is no mistaking it. Your father dropped the letters into the fire, but she ought not to write to him, Derry, and I should like to tell her so.