Lady Mary, with sweetest, softest emphasis, had pressed Mrs. Bradley’s hand in farewell and now moved beside him to the door. She was gracefully occupied in swathing and enfolding; she dropped her veil; she drew her furs together; she avoided meeting again the mirror of his eyes; and she said: “At my age one has learned to give up things. I must give up my dear little Alix.” She made Giles think of a soft white hand, withdrawing itself, while avoiding all danger of a rent, from a glove that has proved a misfit. CHAPTER II When Giles got back to his study, he found Alix there, looking out of the window. The sound of Lady Mary’s motor had hardly died away. He saw that there was nothing now that could be concealed from Alix. “She had come to speak about my mother,” said Alix. It was strange to hear her say, “my mother,” and pitiful. Her voice was strange; yet he knew, in seeing her, that he, too, whatever her sufferings might be, must count upon Alix. It was Alix who would shield them. “Yes. Marigold Hamble has just come back from Paris,” he said. The gas-fire was alight this morning, burning rather low. He went to it and turned it up so that there should be a brighter glow; and then, since there was nothing he could say to Alix, he waited for what she would find to say. She watched him while he bent to the fire. He felt her eyes on him. Then, with a slow step, she came forward and sank down in her corner of the sofa. Alix was very pale; her eyes were set in dark circles. Glancing at her, Giles wondered with how much of strength she thus, after the shipwreck of the day before, possessed herself before him. He guessed from her attitude as she sat there, straightly, yet leaning a little against the cushion, that it had only been by the determined exercise of her will that she had forced herself to rise on hearing the motor arrive, and to descend to meet whatever fresh disaster her presence among them might have given birth to. She had parted from him the day before, broken, speechless, disfigured with weeping; but now she showed him only calm. Sorrow had not softened or disintegrated her. It had knitted her to a new hardness, and what she found to say as she sat there looking into the fire was: “So Mrs. Bradley knows now, too. Everybody knows about my mother.” “She doesn’t conceal anything, Alix, dear,” said Giles, dreadfully troubled. “Everybody who meets her must come to know that her life is—unconventional.” “Does Mrs. Bradley know that I know?” Alix asked. “Not yet,” said Giles. “I told her just now that I’d rather not talk about it for a little while. She’s a good deal knocked up. But, if you agree, all I need say to her, Alix, dear, is that I myself have explained to you the grounds of Lady Mary’s objection. Toppie, I am sure, will say nothing. Mummy need never know more than what she’s learned from Lady Mary. She doesn’t know what Toppie knows.” Alix sat silent, looking into the fire.