Instinctively though Jean had recognised the desire at the back of Glyn’s decision to stop at Montavan, she was scrupulously careful not to let him guess her recognition. She took her cue from his own demeanour, which was outwardly that of a man merely travelling for pleasure, and she listened with a grim sense of amusement when poor Monsieur Vautrinot, the _maître d’hôtel_, recognising Peterson as a former client, sympathetically recalled the sad circumstances of his previous visit and was roundly snubbed for his pains. To Jean the loss of her mother had meant far less than it would have done to a girl in more commonplace circumstances. It was true that Jacqueline had shown herself all that was kindhearted and generous in her genuine wish to compass the girl’s happiness, and that Jean had been frankly fond of her and attracted by her, but in no sense of the words had there been any interpretation of a maternal or filial relationship. As Jean herself, to the huge entertainment of her parents, had on one occasion summed up the situation: “Of course I know I’m a quite superfluous third at Beirnfels, but, all the same, you two really do make the most perfect host and hostess, and you try awfully hard not to let me feel _de trop_.” But, despite the fact that Jacqueline had represented little more to her daughter than a brilliant and delightful personality with whom circumstances happened to have brought her into contact, Jean was conscious of a sudden thrill of pain as her glance travelled across the wide stretches of snow and came at last to rest on the little burial ground which lay half hidden beneath the shoulder of a hill. She was moved by an immense consciousness of loss--not just the mere sense of bereavement which the circumstances would naturally have engendered, but something more absolute--a sense of all the exquisite maternal element which she had missed in the woman who was dead. And then came recognition of the uselessness of such regret. Nothing could have made Jacqueline other than she was--one of the world’s great lovers. Mated to the man she loved, she asked nothing more of Nature, nor had she herself anything more to give. And the same reasoning, though perhaps in a less degree, could be applied to Peterson’s own attitude of detachment towards his daughter; although Jean was intuitively aware that she had come to mean much more to him since her mother’s death, even though it might be, perhaps, only because she represented a tangible link with his past happiness. Thrusting aside the oppression of thought conjured up by her glimpse of that quiet God’s Acre, set high up among the hills, she turned abruptly from the window and made her way downstairs to the hotel vestibule.