Jeannie made a little hopeless gesture with her hands.
"Oh, Daisy, I didn't know that you loved him," she said. "Indeed, I did not. But, my dear, he did not love you. How could he have if he behaved as he has behaved?"
"You made him," said Daisy. "You----" Then once again anger flamed into her voice. "Ah, what a true friend you have been to me!" she said. "Were you as true a friend to Diana too?"
She had taken up one of the photographs, that which represented her and Diana together.
"Here we are together," she said, "and we thank you. Here is Diana by herself----"
And then she stopped abruptly. Her eye had fallen on the photograph of Diana which she had given only last year to Jeannie. It was signed "Diana, 1907." She drew it out of its frame.
"Aunt Jeannie," she said, quickly, "in what year did Diana die?"
Jeannie turned to her suddenly at this most unexpected question, and saw what it was that Daisy held in her hand. She made a desperate effort to turn Daisy's attention away at any cost.
"Daisy, we were talking about Lord Lindfield," she said. "What reason had he ever given you to make you think he loved you? And has he not given you a strong reason for showing he did not?"
Daisy looked at her for a moment, and then back to the photograph.
"She died five years ago," she said. "But this is signed 1907, last year."
Once again Jeannie tried to turn Daisy's attention.
"And if he did fall in love with me, what then?" she said. "You assume it is all my fault."
Daisy looked at her steadily a moment, and then back at the photograph.
"Yes, yes," she said. "But you were with Diana when she died, were you not? When did she die?"
Jeannie covered her face with her hands a moment, thinking intently, and then Daisy spoke again.
"Why was I told she died five years ago?" she asked. "You told me so yourself. Were you hiding anything?"
"Her husband came to England after her death," she said. "He stopped with you, I remember, when I was living with you."
"Was there something dreadful, something disgraceful?" she asked. "Aunt Jeannie, I must know. I must!"
Jeannie got up out of her chair, where she had been sitting ever since Daisy entered. Daisy as she spoke had risen also from the writing-table, and, still holding the photograph of Diana in her hand, stood by her.