“I had to come and see if you could tell me more. I’m so fond of darling little Alix.” Lady Mary had beautifully placed herself in a corner of the sofa, her furs unfolded, her long veil cast back from the framing velvet of her little hat. She was not thinking about looking beautiful;—Giles did her justice;—but she was thinking, very intently, about doing what she had to do as beautifully as possible, and that intention seemed to dispose her hands across the sables of her muff, to cross her silken ankles and tilt to a most appealing angle the pearls that glimmered in her ears. “You see—Jerry— It’s all foolishness”—she found her way. “He’s only a boy.—He falls in love with someone different every six months.—He fancies himself in love with Alix now—and I don’t wonder at it. She’s the most enchanting young girl I’ve seen for years.—But Marigold Hamble, my husband’s niece, heard in Paris, just the other day, such deplorable things. Deplorable.” Lady Mary’s voice sank to the longest, saddest emphasis. “Marigold is a wretched gossip, and worse.—She’s a _mauvaise langue_; I would not trust her story. But she gave chapter and verse to such an extent that I had to come to you—since you know madame Vervier.” “But gossip is always like that,” Mrs. Bradley persisted, a spot of colour on each cheek. “Some people see evil in everything. And Giles liked her. And everything Alix has told me of her is so lovely. And my son, Owen, who is dead, was devotedly attached to her. It is because he was so fond of her mother that Alix is with us now.” For a moment, after that, Lady Mary’s soft, bright eyes, from between the veils and the pearls, remained fixed on Mrs. Bradley’s candid countenance and Giles knew that his mother had revealed more of the miserable truth to Lady Mary than she herself, he hoped, would ever know. “You’re quite right, Mummy, darling. I do like her,” so he felt impelled to sustain her, though he knew that such sustainment might only be for her immediate bewilderment. “I do like her,” he repeated, turning his eyes on Lady Mary and bidding her make what use she liked of the information. And then he found the words he had used to Alix yesterday: “She’s not bad. She’s unfortunate and wrong. But, it’s true:—I found out while I was with her, that she is a woman who—” poor Giles paused, while Lady Mary and his mother gazed at him—“who,” he finished, “has lovers.” After this, it was Mrs. Bradley who first spoke. “Has lovers, Giles?”