and yet keep her photograph? She pressed her
hands over her forehead, trying to see things clearly. Had they told
Jon--had her visit to Robin Hill forced them to tell him? Everything now
turned on that! She knew, they all knew, except--perhaps--Jon!

She walked up and down, biting her lip and thinking desperately hard.
Jon loved his mother. If they had told him, what would he do? She could
not tell. But if they had not told him, should she not--could she not
get him for herself--get married to him, before he knew? She searched
her memories of Robin Hill. His mother's face so passive--with its dark
eyes and as if powdered hair, its reserve, its smile--baffled her; and
his father's--kindly, sunken, ironic. Instinctively she felt they would
shrink from telling 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 o