“No one except my poor grandfather. I always pray for the repose of his soul. That is what we do in my church. Is it different in yours? And if they are reposing, how can they be near us?” Indeed, the thought of Grand-père as near, in his new, unimaginable state, was even more disquieting than Toppie herself. Toppie seemed to feel that she had drawn her young companion beyond her depth. She was silent for a moment, gathering back her thoughts from their search for sympathy, and she asked, then: “Why do you say your poor grandfather? Was he unhappy?” “I am afraid he was. Very unhappy.” “Oh, I am so sorry. You felt and shared it. I saw in your face at once, dear little Alix, that you had shared unhappiness.—You are so young; younger than your age in one way; yet in another you are so grown up; it is strange.” Toppie’s eyes mused on her for a moment. “Why was he unhappy?” she added gently. “Though, indeed, most people are.” “He was ruined. He had lost everything,” said Alix. “Montarel, where the Mouverays have always lived, is sold now, and he knew before he died that it would be so. And he had lost everyone he loved, except me.” “Your mother is not his daughter, then?” “No; my father was his son; his only child.” “But you and your mother were often with him?” “Only I. He liked having me alone.” Alix did not require consideration to find an answer. To Giles, in the train, frankness had been possible; but it was difficult to repeat such frankness. And Toppie, Alix felt, was so different from Giles. She would not understand Maman being divorced as he had. So she evaded her question. They had reached the Rectory now, and she was glad not only that they had passed away from Grand-père and his causes for unhappiness, but from Captain Owen, too. She would have been sorry to have had to answer questions about the Paris days when so much of the brightness had dropped from him. Her memories of Captain Owen in Paris were all tinged with sadness; perhaps because the war was so much nearer in Paris and Captain Owen’s return to it so imminent. It was as if, in seeing him there with them for his short leaves, they had seen death always beside him. “I hope you will be here when our roses are out,” said Toppie, in the Rectory garden. “Father and I are proud of our roses.” Alix counted on being back with Maman long before the time of roses, but she said that she hoped so, too, and as they passed a window she caught a glimpse of a tall, bleached man sitting at a writing-table, very erect, austere, and absorbed; like an old eighteenth-century print of d’Alembert, Diderot, or some such erudite wigged gentleman. “Yes; it’s my father,” said Toppie. “You’ll see him directly; at tea.”