Giles, meanwhile, in his study, sat and wondered what he should do next. Until he had seen Alix again he did not know. How could he go to Toppie? What was there to say to Toppie? He had answered all her questions on the Autumn afternoon in the birch-woods. He had answered all her questions about Owen, and he had answered all her questions about himself. She had seen him on that afternoon place himself on the side of madame Vervier. “She is the product of her mother,” he had said of Alix. “Do you find fault with it?” He had showed himself as understanding madame Vervier; as exculpating her. Toppie might come to forgive Owen, caught in the horrible siren’s net; she would never, he believed, forgive him. Unless she sent for him, how could he go to her? In the midst of these reflections he heard a motor drive up to the door and, going to look out, saw with astonishment Lady Mary Hamble descending from it. Lady Mary could only have come to see Alix and, after she had disappeared, he stood wondering what Alix would find to say to her. He had, while he had brooded on their disaster, almost forgotten Alix’s love-story and it seemed now to have lost all its potency. Jerry was too light, too boyish to face the resolutions that would now be needed. “She’s too good for him,” Giles muttered to himself, as he had muttered of the French order on the summer day at Les Vaudettes, standing with bent head and hands in his pockets as if listening for what next was to happen. Too good for him. Yet perhaps Jerry would not fail. What was next to happen did not long delay, and the sight of his mother’s face in the doorway warned him that it was something quite unforeseen. “Oh, Giles, dear!—Will you come?” Rarely had he heard his mother’s voice so shaken, and if her face had shown consternation last night it was almost horror that it showed this morning. “Lady Mary is here,” she said. “She came to see me. Oh, Giles—it is about poor little Alix. Lady Mary has heard—terrible things about her mother.” So it had fallen. Better so, perhaps, thought Giles, as for a moment he stared at his mother in a receptive silence before following her to the drawing-room. Lady Mary was there, floating, to Giles’s sense, in an indefiniteness, made up of lovely hesitancy, veils, and a touch of tears, that was yet more definite than a steely armour. She came towards him at once with outstretched hands, saying: “Dear Giles, perhaps you can help us.” “For it can’t be true, can it, Giles?” Mrs. Bradley urged in her shaken voice. She was so much more worn than Lady Mary, yet she looked so much younger and Giles read on her face a resentment, all unconscious, against Lady Mary and her standards. “You know her, Giles, and can explain. She’s unconventional, isn’t she, and unworldly, and might do unusual things and be misjudged by worldly people;—but Alix’s mother can’t be a bad woman.” So he found himself face to face once more with the bad woman.