Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/344

 entering with a beaming face. 'The roads are flooded. The children cannot go to school. ''Viens, Germaine, et dis bonjour à Madame. ' ''

Germaine, though chocolates had passed between her and Jill, did not say good-morning, but her small, square face, topped by its cockade of red ribbon, peered round at the pretty lady from behind her mother's skirt.

Dick looked in while Amélie was there and smiled at her and asked her how she had slept. She felt that he had seized the opportunity so that they should not be alone. His face looked strange and new. He was much older. She suddenly saw what he would be like when he was an old man. She saw what his father, perhaps his grandfather, had looked like. Something bare, elemental, atavistic, was revealed in his face.

'I'm breakfasting downstairs,' he said, 'so that I can watch the river. It's magnificent. When will you get up?'

'As soon as I've had my breakfast.'

'And come down to the ''salon? ' ''

Yes.'

Dick looked at her, humbly, intently. He was afraid of her; afraid for her. Before his strange, aged, humble eyes, Jill's eyes fell. She could do nothing for Dick. She would not be able to hide from him how he must make her suffer. She took up her roll and buttered it, mechanically, and poured out her coffee, while Amélie, watching the devoted pair with fond complacency, still loitered in the door, turning her head to rebuke