The smallest, most smiling little house it was, that of mademoiselle Fontaine’s family. It stood behind a pink-and-grey wall in a tiny garden and when they entered the gate at four o’clock they were welcomed by the fox terrier, and found old madame Dumont, crumpled up in black draperies and under a black parasol all lace and fringes, sitting out in the sun on the flagged path with a row of white and purple petunias leading up to her. Mademoiselle Fontaine stood behind her chair and gently but forcibly shouted their names to her, and mademoiselle Fontaine’s mother, who did not bear her name, but was plain madame Collet, emerged from the house with a tray of tea and coffee. She was a stout, pale little woman with a high, old-fashioned bosom and prominent, old-fashioned hips and an old-fashioned fringe across her faded forehead. Careful, cautious, grave and happy, she seemed as one who moved among precious objects to whose well-being and security she knew herself essential. “Is that as you wish it, Blanche?” Giles heard her whisper to her daughter; and to her mother, “You are warm enough, Maman?” As for Grand’mère, Giles, in spite of Alix’s intimations, was hardly prepared for such a fearsome old lady. Very fearsome he found her, peering shrewdly up at him through the fringes of her parasol with the beady eye of an old raven under a dark-blue beetling eyebrow. She was powdered and dyed, and an erection of black lace ornamented her ample indigo wig and fell in lappets on either side of her long Semitic cheeks. Her smile was histrionic and her voice hoarse as if with years of use for public purposes. Now and then she emitted a loud gong-like laugh, and Giles could somehow imagine her, so full of vitality did she still seem, standing in classic draperies on a vast stage and bellowing forth passages from Victor Hugo. She talked almost immediately of Chopin and mademoiselle Fontaine stood leaning on the back of her chair listening to her as if she felt the rôle of listener, for herself as well as for them, a privilege. Giles could not but admire what, he supposed, was the effect of the French tradition of family life. It was difficult to associate an intelligence as versatile as mademoiselle Fontaine’s with this derelict antiquity, and even more difficult to think of her as the daughter of the homespun little person who poured out their tea and coffee. But mademoiselle Fontaine showed no sign, apologetic or explanatory, of finding anything amiss with either of them, and if her manner towards madame Collet was often curt and authoritative, an affection that could show itself at moments in quite a pretty playfulness evidently underlay it.