Giles got back to his study, he found Alix there, looking out of the window. The sound of Lady Mary's motor had hardly died away. He saw that there was nothing now that could be concealed from Alix.
“She had come to speak about my mother,” said Alix.
It was strange to hear her say, “my mother,” and pitiful. Her voice was strange; yet he knew, in seeing her, that he, too, whatever her sufferings might be, must count upon Alix. It was Alix who would shield them.
“Yes. Marigold Hamble has just come back from Paris,” he said. The gas-fire was alight this morning, burning rather low. He went to it and turned it up so that there should be a brighter glow; and then, since there was nothing he could say to Alix, he waited for what she would find to say. She watched him while he bent to the fire. He felt her eyes on him. Then, with a slow step, she came forward and sank down in her corner of the sofa.
Alix was very pale; her eyes were set in dark circles. Glancing at her, Giles wondered with how much of strength she thus, after the shipwreck of the day before, possessed herself before him. He guessed from her attitude as she sat there, straightly, yet leaning a little against the cushion, that it had only been by the determined exercise of her will that she had forced herself to rise on hearing the motor arrive, and to descend to meet whatever fresh disaster her presence among them might have given birth to. She had parted from him the day before, broken, speechless, disfigured with weeping; but now she showed him only calm. Sorrow had not softened or disintegrated her. It had knitted her to a new hardness, and what she found to say as she sat there looking into the fire was:
“So Mrs. Bradley knows now, too. Everybody knows about my mother.”
“She doesn't conceal anything, Alix, dear,” said Giles, dreadfully troubled. “Everybody who meets her must come to know that her life is—unconventional.”
“Does Mrs. Bradley know that I know?” Alix asked.
“Not yet,” said Giles. “I told her just now that I'd rather not talk about it for a little while. She's a good deal knocked up. But, if you agree, all I need say to her, Alix, dear, is that I myself have explained to you the grounds of Lady Mary's objection. Toppie, I am sure, will say nothing. Mummy need never know more than what she's learned from Lady Mary. She doesn't know what Toppie knows.”
Alix sat silent, looking into the fire.
“We needn't talk about any of that, you see, any more,” Giles took up presently, having walked to the window and back again while he raged at his helplessness. “Never forget what I said to you yesterday. That's all you need understand. I'll make Mummy understand it, too. And as for you, she only loves you the more because of your—your difficulties. What we must talk about, you know, is Jerry. I'd really forgotten all about him.”
“Yes, I had, too.” Alix did not raise her eyes. “What is there to say of him?”
Giles, his hands in his pockets, gazed down at her. “He hasn't forgotten you.”
“I hope he soon may learn to,” said Alix.
“But, Alix, Jerry is sticking to you,” Giles protested. “Jerry is all right. I'm very pleased about him. I thought it probable he wasn't good enough for you and now I find he is.”
“I am quite sure he is good enough. That is not the question,” said Alix. She sat there, leaning slightly against her cushion, her hands folded in her lap, and looked into the fire. “I need not think of Jerry now. I have only one person to think about, and that is my mother. I must go back to her at once. To-morrow, Giles.”
“But surely you're not going to chuck Jerry!” cried Giles.
For a moment, at this, Alix raised her eyes to his, and it was as if in their dim surprise he read a reproach; the reproach of a serious race who saw facts as they were. There was no humility or confusion in Alix. She would not say to him that it was she who was not good enough for Jerry; but certain facts were there and her glance told him that he did not help her by pretending not to see them.
“Dear Jerry,” was what she said and she then looked back at the fire. “I am sorry if he is to be made sad. But it will not be for long. He will get over it,” said Alix, and her voice was almost the voice of madame Vervier and of Lady Mary. “He is so young. And he must come to see that with objections on both sides what he hoped for is impossible.”
Giles now came and sank down on the other end of the sofa. He had not been pretending. He saw the facts quite as clearly as Alix could ask him to do; but what it really came to was that his race, he believed with all his heart, saw further and more important facts than the French did.