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Updated: June 29, 2025
Yet it seemed best just then, in her trouble, that she should go away to Italy, and that it should be pretended that you were Mrs. Jervaise's true daughter. I arranged that. I have blamed myself since, but I did not understand at the time that Mrs. Jervaise consented solely that she might keep you in sight of your father as a reminder of his sin.
Jervaise's expression admirably conveyed his complete boredom with me and my speeches. "You don't know anything about it," he said, with a short gesture of final dismissal. "But, Mr. Jervaise," Anne put in, "what can you possibly suspect, in this case?" "He'd suspect anything of anybody for the sake of making a case of it," I said, addressing Anne.
Out of the unearthly stillness, Jervaise's voice replied in a frightened murmur, "Someone coming," he said, as if he, alone, had knowledge of and responsibility for that supreme event. And still no one came. The door remained steadfastly closed. Outside the porch, the earth had recovered from the recent disaster, and we could hear the exquisitely gentle murmur of the rain.
I was listening to the others, but I was watching Banks, and I saw him sneer when that assertion was made. The expression seemed to have been forced out of him against his will; just a quick jerk downwards of the corners of his mouth that portrayed a supreme contempt for old Jervaise's distress. But that sneer revealed Banks's opinion to me better than anything he had said or done.
Jervaise's face came out as a presentable whole, my memory of his wife delivers the hawk nose as the one salient object of what is otherwise a mere jumble. Old Jervaise certainly looked the more aristocratic of the pair, but Mrs. Jervaise was a woman of good family. She had been a Miss Norman before her marriage one of the Shropshire Normans.
I might have argued and protested for hours, and the only result would have been to confirm Jervaise's suspicions. Confronted by an innocent demand for explanation, he had not a leg to stand on. Brenda's eyebrows went up again, with that slightly bizarre, exotic air which was so arresting. She spoke to me this time.
Olive, Nora Bailey, and Hughes had, I supposed, followed Mrs. Jervaise's lead in duty bound, and I knew nearly enough why Miss Tattersall had cut me. I had no idea, then, that I had come under suspicion of a far more serious offence than that of a sectarian nonconformity. Indeed, I hardly gave the matter a moment's attention.
He had been expecting blackmail; had probably been willing to pay almost any price to avoid the scandal. I wondered how far the morning interview had relieved his mind? "That explains Mr. Jervaise's state of nerves this morning," I remarked. "I could see that he was frightfully upset, but I thought it was about Brenda. I had an idea that he might be very devoted to her."
Old Jervaise's excuse was, quite pathetically, only a pretence; but he tried very hard to appear engrossed in the making of a hearty meal. His manner had begun to fascinate me, and I had constantly to check myself from staring at him. I found it so difficult to account satisfactorily for the effect of dread that he in some way conveyed.
I may not give way gracefully to such an opponent as Jervaise, but I do not stupidly persist in a personal opinion through sheer obstinacy. And up to Jervaise's last statement, his general deductions were, I admitted to myself, not only within the bounds of probability but, also, within distance of affording a tolerable explanation of Anne's diplomacy during our interview.
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