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 remained under influence
of bromide material and spiritual. But then reality came back. Her aunt
had left out all that mattered--all the feeling, the hate, the love, the
unforgivingness of passionate hearts. She, who knew so little of life,
and had touched only the fringe of love, was yet aware by instinct that
words have as little relation to fact and feeling as coin to the bread
it buys. 'Poor Father!' she thought. 'Poor me! Poor Jon! But I don't
care, I mean to have him!' From the window of her darkened room she saw
"that man" issue from the door below and "prowl" away. If he and her
mother--how would that affect her chance? Surely it must make her
father cling to her more closely, so that he would consent in the end
to anything she wanted, or become reconciled the sooner to what she did
without his knowledge.
She took some earth from the flower-box in the window, and with all her
might flung it after that disappearing figure. It fell short, but the
action did her good.