"Where is Robin Hill, Father?"
Robin Hill! Robin Hill, round which all that tragedy had centred! What
did she want to know for?
"In Surrey," he muttered; "not far from Richmond. Why?"
"Is the house there?"
"What house?"
"That they quarrelled about."
"Yes. But what's all that to do with you? We're going home
to-morrow--you'd better be thinking about your frocks."
"Bless you! They're all thought about. A family feud? It's like the
Bible, or Mark Twain--awfully exciting. What did you do in the feud,
Father?"
"Never you mind."
"Oh! But if I'm to keep it up?"
"Who said you were to keep it up?"
"You, darling."
"I? I said it had nothing to do with you."
"Just what I think, you know; so that's all right."
She was too sharp for him; fine, as Annette sometimes called her.
Nothing for it but to distract her attention.
"There's a bit of rosaline point in here," he said, stopping before a
shop, "that I thought you might like."
When he had paid for it and they had resumed their progress, Fleur said:
"Don't you think that boy's mother is the most beautiful woman of her
age you've ever seen?"
Soames shivered. Uncanny, the way she stuck to it!
"I don't know that I noticed her."
"Dear, I saw the corner of your eye."
"You see everything--and a great deal more, it seems to me!"
"What's her husband like? He must be your first cousin, if your fathers
were brothers."
"Dead, for all I know," said Soames, with sudden vehemence. "I haven't
seen him for twenty years."
"What was he?"
"A painter."
"That's quite jolly."
The words: "If you want to please me you'll put those people out of your
head," sprang to Soames' lips, but he choked them back--he must not let
her see his feelings.
"He once insulted me," he said.
Her quick eyes rested on his face.
"I see! You didn't avenge it, and it rankles. Poor Father! You let me
have a go!"
It was really like lying in the dark with a mosquito hovering above his
face. Such pertinacity in Fleur was new to him, and, as they reached the
hotel, he said grimly:
"I did my best. And that's enough about these people. I'm going up till
dinner."
"I shall sit here."
With a parting look at her extended in a chair--a look half-resentful,
half-adoring--Soames moved into the lift and was transported to their
suite on the fourth floor. He stood by the window of the sitting-room
which gave view over Hyde Park, and drummed a finger on its pane. His
feelings were confused, tetchy, troubled. The throb of that old wound,
scarred over by Time and new interests, was mingled with displeasure
and anxiety, and a slight pain in his chest where that nougat stuff had
disagreed. Had Annette come in? Not that she was any good to him in such
a difficulty. Whenever she had questioned him about his first marriage,
he had always shut her up; she knew nothing of it, save that it had
been the great passion of his life, and his marriage with herself
but domestic makeshift. She had always kept the grudge of that up her
sleeve, as it were, and used it commercially. He listened. A sound--the
vague murmur of a woman's movements--was coming through the door. She
was in. He tapped.