g Jon, even now, shrink from hurting him--for of course
it would hurt him awfully to know!

Her aunt must be made not to tell her father that she knew. So long as
neither she herself nor Jon were supposed to know, there was still a
chance--freedom to cover one's tracks, and get what her heart was set on.
But she was almost overwhelmed by her isolation. Every one's hand was
against her--every one's! It was as Jon had said--he and she just wanted
to live and the past was in their way, a past they hadn't shared in, and
didn't understand! Oh! What a shame! And suddenly she thought of June.
Would she help them? For somehow June had left on her the impression
that she would be sympathetic with their love, impatient of obstacle.
Then, instinctively, she thought: 'I won't give anything away, though,
even to her. I daren't. I mean to have Jon; against them all.'

Soup was brought up to her, and one of Winifred's pet headache cachets.
She swallowed both. Then Winifred herself appeared. Fleur opened her
campaign with the words:

"You know, Auntie, I do wish people wouldn't think I'm in love with that
boy. Why, I've hardly seen him!"

Winifred, though experienced, was not "fine." She accepted the remark
with considerable relief. Of course, it was not pleasant for the girl to
hear of the family scandal, and she set herself to minimise the matter, a
task for which she was eminently qualified, "raised" fashionably under a
comfortable mother and a father whose nerves might not be shaken, and for
many years the wife of Montague Dartie. Her description was a
masterpiece of understatement. Fleur's father's first wife had been very
foolish. There had been a young man who had got run over, and she had
left Fleur's father. Then, years after, when it might all have
come--right again, she had taken up with their cousin Jolyon; and, of
course, her father had been obliged to have a divorce. Nobody remembered
anything of it now, except just the family. And, perhaps, it had all
turned out for the best; her father had Fleur; and Jolyon and Irene had
been quite happy, they said, and their boy was a nice boy. "Val having
Holly, too, is a sort of plaster, don't you know?" With these soothing
words, Winifred patted her niece's shoulder; thought: 'She's a nice,
plump little thing!' and went back to Prosper Profond, who, in spite of
his indiscretion, was very "amusing" this evening.

For some minutes after her aunt had gone Fleur r