A little later Lily looked up from her rather awkward but industrious labors with a needle, and fixed her keen young eyes on Mademoiselle.
"Is there any news about Aunt Elinor?" she asked.
"She is with him," said Mademoiselle, shortly. "They are here now, in the city. How he dared to come back!"
"Does mother see her?"
"No. Certainly not."
"Why 'certainly' not? He is Aunt Elinor's husband. She isn't doing anything wicked."
"A woman who would leave a home like this," said Mademoiselle, "and a distinguished family. Position. Wealth. For a brute who beats her. And desert her child also!"
"Does he really beat her? I don't quite believe that, Mademoiselle."
"It is not a subject for a young girl."
"Because really," Lily went on, "there is something awfully big about a woman who will stick to one man like that. I am quite sure I would bite a man who struck me, but--suppose I loved him terribly--" her voice trailed off. "You see, dear, I have seen a lot of brutality lately. An army camp isn't a Sunday school picnic. And I like strong men, even if they are brutal sometimes."
Mademoiselle carefully cut a thread.
"This--you were speaking to Ellen of a young man. Is he a--what you term brutal?"
Suddenly Lily laughed.
"You poor dear!" she said. "And mother, too, of course! You're afraid I'm in love with Willy Cameron. Don't you know that if I were, I'd probably never even mention his name?"
"But is he brutal?" persisted Mademoiselle.
"I'll tell you about him. He is a thin, blond young man, tall and a bit lame. He has curly hair, and he puts pomade on it to take the curl out. He is frightfully sensitive about not getting in the army, and he is perfectly sweet and kind, and as brutal as a June breeze. You'd better tell mother. And you can tell her he isn't in love with me, or I with him. You see, I represent what he would call the monied aristocracy of America, and he has the most fearful ideas about us."
"An anarchist, then?" asked. Mademoiselle, extremely comforted.
"Not at all. He says he belongs to the plain people. The people in between. He is rather oratorical about them. He calls them the backbone of the country."
Mademoiselle relaxed. She had been too long in old Anthony's house to consider very seriously the plain people. Her world, like Anthony Cardew's, consisted of the financial aristocracy, which invested money in industries and drew out rich returns, while providing employment for the many; and of the employees of the magnates, who had recently shown strong tendencies toward upsetting the peace of the land, and had given old Anthony one or two attacks of irritability when it was better to go up a rear staircase if he were coming down the main one.