“We’ve forgotten all about it years and years ago,” she said comfortably.  “Come and have dinner!”

“No, Auntie.  I don’t feel very well.  May I go upstairs?”

“My dear!” murmured Winifred, concerned, “you’re not taking this to heart?  Why, you haven’t properly come out yet!  That boy’s a child!”

“What boy?  I’ve only got a headache.  But I can’t stand that man to-night.”

“Well, well,” said Winifred, “go and lie down.  I’ll send you some bromide, and I shall talk to Prosper Profond.  What business had he to gossip?  Though I must say I think it’s much better you should know.”

Fleur smiled.  “Yes,” she said, and slipped from the room.

She went up with her head whirling, a dry sensation in her throat, a guttered frightened feeling in her breast.  Never in her life as yet had she suffered from even momentary fear that she would not get what she had set her heart on.  The sensations of the afternoon had been full and poignant, and this gruesome discovery coming on the top of them had really made her head ache.  No wonder her father had hidden that photograph, so secretly behind her own-ashamed of having kept it!  But could he hate Jon’s mother 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: