Madame Vervier wore a dark silk dress, purple or red or russet—Giles in the waning light could not define the tint—fastening at the breast with a great old clasp of wrought gold. A fringed Empire scarf, purple, silver, and rose, fell about her beautiful bare arms; a high Empire comb was in her hair, and with her dark gaze she made Giles think of a lady drawn by Ingres. She moved across to the window, her arm around Alix, and said, standing there and looking out: “_La belle soirée!_” It was a citron and ash sky above a golden sea. “Maman, you will sing this evening,” said Alix. “Giles has not heard you sing.” “Monsieur de Valenbois is the singer. I have no voice,” said madame Vervier. “One needs no voice to sing the songs I mean,” said Alix. “Do you know our old songs of France, Giles?” She looked round at him over her shoulder, palely shining in the white taffeta, and Giles, with a sinking and sickening as of an unimaginable yet palpable apprehension, saw that André de Valenbois’ appreciative eyes were upon her; upon her, rather than upon her lovely mother. “Do you know the one beginning, ‘_L’Amour de moi_’” asked Alix. Giles said he did not. “Ah, it is the very dawn of loveliness, that song,” said André, and in the words Giles felt the expression of a perhaps subconscious train of thought. “It is so young. It is all dew and candour. You must hear it, monsieur Giles.” The young Frenchman wandered about the room, his hands in his pockets. “Of the time of your Chaucer,” he went on. “Our countries then had much the same heart. It was the time when our great cathedrals rose and miracles were as plentiful as turtle-doves.” He paused before the mantelpiece and took up one of the photographs set there. “This is of you, mademoiselle Alix?” Madame Vervier had turned from the window, and, still holding Alix, she approached him. “Yes; it is of me. It was taken in England,” said Alix. Giles had not noticed the photograph, but he noticed a change in Alix’s voice. He, too, drew near, and saw the little snap-shot of Alix with the dogs at the edge of the birch-wood. But it was in a frame delicately embroidered in blue and silver, and he asked in all innocence, “Where did the pretty frame come from, Alix?” “Toppie made it,” said Alix. The alteration in her voice was now evident. He now knew why, and fell to instant silence. “Toppie? What is Toppie?” André de Valenbois asked, laughing a little and looking at Alix over her photograph. “That is a name I have never heard before.” “It is _le petit nom_ of mademoiselle Enid Westmacott,” said madame Vervier, in tones sad and gentle. “She was the _fiancée_ of monsieur Giles’s brother, our friend, killed in battle, of whom you have often heard me speak. Mademoiselle Toppie”—how strangely the childish syllables fell from her untroubled lips—“made the little frame for me as a Christmas gift. Had you not seen it, monsieur Giles? It is exquisite. I was infinitely touched by her thought of me.”