M.M.!" she called, and was gone among the rose-trees. She looked at her
wrist-watch and the windows of the house. It struck her as curiously
uninhabited. Past six! The pigeons were just gathering to roost, and
sunlight slanted on the dovecot, on their snowy feathers, and beyond
in a shower on the top boughs of the woods. The click of billiard-balls
came from the ingle-nook--Jack Cardigan, no doubt; a faint rustling,
too, from an eucalyptus-tree, startling Southerner in this old English
garden. She reached the verandah and was passing in, but stopped at
the sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left. Mother! Monsieur
Profond! From behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she
heard these words:

"I don't, Annette."

Did Father know that he called her mother "Annette"? Always on the side
of her Father--as children are ever on one side or the other in houses
where relations are a little strained--she stood, uncertain. Her mother
was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice--one word she
caught: "Demain." And Profond's answer: "All right." Fleur frowned. A
little sound came out into the stillness. Then Profond's voice: "I'm
takin' a small stroll."

Fleur darted through the window into the morning-room. There he came
from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and the
click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she had
ceased to hear, began again. She shook herself, passed into the hall,
and opened the drawing-room door. Her mother was sitting on the sofa
between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a cushion,
her lips half parted, her eyes half closed. She looked extraordinarily
handsome.