" Those
hospitable cellars advertising their existence in air raids and
bombardments must be a comforting sight for passers-by, now and then;
but no siren wailed us a warning. We drove on in peace; and
I--disappointed at Vitrimont--quietly kept watch for a tall, thin figure
of a man with a slight limp. At any moment, I thought, I might see him,
for at Luneville he lives--if he lives anywhere!
I was so eager and excited that I could hardly turn my mind to other
things; but Brian, not knowing why I should be absent-minded, constantly
asked questions about what we passed. Julian O'Farrell had exchanged his
sister for Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, whom he had persuaded to take the short
trip in his ramshackle taxi. His excuse was that Mother Beckett would
deal out more wisely than Dierdre his Red Cross supplies to the returned
refugees; so we had the girl with us; and I caught reproachful glances
if I was slow in answering my blind brother. She herself suspects him as
a _poseur_, yet she judges me careless of his needs--which I should find
funny, if it didn't make me furious! Just to see what Dierdre would do,
and perhaps to provoke her, sometimes I didn't answer at all, but left
her to explain our surroundings to Brian. I hardly thought she would
respond to the silent challenge, but almost ostentatiously she did.
She cried, "There's a castle!" when we came to the fine and rather staid
chateau which Duke Stanislas loved, and where he died.
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