Giles, as he rose to greet the bright apparition in his doorway, did not know whether it was with more gloom or satisfaction that he saw it. He was glad that Jerry was holding on, yet his presence there seemed to add to his own sense of bereavement. He could do nothing more for Alix. She had shown him that he could do nothing more. But though she had disowned Jerry, it now remained to be seen if Jerry could do something. “Is she gone!” Jerry exclaimed. Giles’s face might have told it to him and his charming eyes, so like his mother’s, went swiftly round the room, partly as if they might still discover the missing Alix, and partly in the unconscious appraisal of a new _milieu_. Like his mother, Jerry would always see everything, wherever he might be. “Yes. She’s gone,” said Giles, giving a push to the sofa. Strange, indeed, to have Alix’s suitor sitting in Alix’s own corner; Giles was aware of a sense of relief as Jerry did not yet take it. “It seemed the simplest thing for her to do.” For a moment, then, he seemed to detect, or suspect, a flavour of relief in the discomfiture on Jerry’s face, but it was in immediate self-exculpation that he said, as if Giles might call him to account: “I couldn’t get here before; really I couldn’t. I’ve been away. I didn’t know till yesterday that Mummy had stolen a march on me. Mummy couldn’t hide from me—she didn’t try to—I’ll do her that justice—how splendidly you’ve been standing up for us.—If she’s gone, do you mean she knows?” “She knows, or has guessed enough,” said Giles. “I don’t really think she’d have seen you if you’d got here before. It’s three days now since she went. What she says, you see”—and Giles again indicated Alix’s corner to Jerry—“is that there are now insuperable objections on both sides, and that her place is with her mother. Do sit down.” But Jerry stood for a moment longer, gazing. “Yes, I see,” he then said. “Yes. That’s just what she would say. But how disgusting that she should have to say anything about it—poor little darling. Isn’t it a miserable business,” he added, as he dropped on to the sofa and glanced with a sort of gentle alarm at the gas-fire, rather as though he might, unless he held himself in, shy at it. He was making Giles, too, think of a nervous, charming horse. “Yes. It’s very miserable in some ways,” said Giles. He did not sit. He stood, his hands in his pockets and leaned against the mantelpiece looking down at his visitor. Very much like a charming horse was Jerry. Giles could almost see him nibbling reconnoitringly at the edge of the stained-oak mantelpiece or choosing suddenly to take a flying leap out of the window. Jerry offered his cigarette-case as though it might help them. “It’s that confounded Marigold nosing out this story about Alix’s mother,” he said, striking his match. “And it’s true, you say?”