"I should call Winnie a typical Devonshire girl," she said.
It seemed a safe enough observation to make about a book that was admittedly all about Devonshire people, and Zella was utterly confounded when James remarked without any change of expression:
"Winnie was Tom Faggus' strawberry mare."
Zella became scarlet with mingled confusion and anger. Her tears, like those of most over-sensitive people, were always near the surface, and her voice failed her as she tried to stammer out something about having forgotten—mixed up Winnie with some other name. . . .
James looked at his pretty, pathetic-looking little cousin with an expression of greater interest than his dark eyes had as yet displayed towards her.
"It's all right, Zella," he said quite gently and in curiously unboyish tones of compassion. "There's nothing for you to be upset about. I was an ass not to tell you sooner that you were—making a mistake."
Zella looked at him with a sudden inexplicable feeling of being understood, and immediately spoke fearlessly:
"I haven't read 'Lorna Doone,' as a matter of fact; but I do know something about the story, and it seemed stupid to say I hadn't read it. Besides, it would have put an end to the conversation," she added, with an indescribable expression that could have proclaimed her French ancestry aloud.
"It was bad luck," remarked James impartially. "Nine times out of ten that kind of thing comes off all right."
Zella was secretly astounded at his matter-of-fact acceptance of "that kind of thing."
"It's rather a horrid sort of thing to do, I know," she said, looking candid, and thinking that James might possibly contradict her.
"And, what's more, I don't believe other people are taken in by it half as often as one thinks," was all the satisfaction she received.
"Of course, Muriel would simply call it telling lies," ventured Zella, who would have called it much the same thing herself, but was by now emboldened to think that James might perhaps take a more tolerant view.
"It isn't telling a downright lie for its own sake. It's motive that matters in that sort of thing," affirmed James, frowning. "But it's misrepresenting the truth, so as to make oneself out what one wants to be thought, instead of what one really is."
"Se faire valoir!" eagerly exclaimed the girl, who had been brought up in an atmosphere of abstract discussions such as were unknown in the Lloyd-Evans household.
"Yes. Most people seem to do that kind of thing one way or another, that would think it wrong to tell a lie outright, and yet consider themselves more or less truthful."
"But, James, there are degrees. The blackness of a lie does depend on what it is about," said Zella confusedly.
"I call self-deception worse than telling lies—a great deal."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans entered the room, and the conversation between the boy and girl ceased abruptly. But there was more animation and interest in Zella's little colourless face than there had been since her arrival at Boscombe.
She found life there very dull, and the atmosphere, in spite of Aunt Marianne's kindness and Muriel's companionship, strangely uncongenial. She was often oppressed with a sense of her own ingratitude and discontent.
But, after that odd little conversation with James, Zella felt as though she had found something which she had subconsciously been missing. She would have liked to resume the same sort of discussion again, and appealed to her cousin at luncheon one day with the quick look of interest that was the expression most natural to her pretty face.
"James, you know what we said about self-deception the other day. Isn't it a form of cowardice?"
James looked annoyed, "glanced at his mother, and said in the most expressionless of voices, " Oh, I don't know." And Mrs. Lloyd-Evans remarked gently: "Deceit is always wrong, dear, but no one should be afraid to tell the truth. Don't you remember the piece of poetry Aunt Marianne is so fond of?—
"'Dare to be true, nothing can need a lie;
The fault that needs it most grows two thereby.'"
"Have some more salad, Zella?" said her Uncle Henry, looking slightly uncomfortable.
The lesson sank into Zella's receptive mind, and she never repeated her mistake.
That same afternoon Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, finding Zella alone in the schoolroom, said to her:
"Come down and help me with the drawing-room flowers, dear. It's Muriel's little job as a rule, but she has had to go for her violin lesson now, as that tiresome man altered his time. It was really rather artful of him, for he took care to let us know at the last minute possible, knowing very well that I shouldn't like it. It's much too late and too dark for Muriel to be out, and I've had to send James with her."
Zella, reluctantly closing her book, rather unwillingly followed her aunt to the drawing-room. She had already learnt that it was of no use to decline any proffered kindness, however unwelcome, of Aunt Marianne's. They carried the silver vases from the drawing-room to the pantry, filled them with water, and bore them solemnly on a little tray to the hall table, where lay a selection of late autumn flowers.
"Put all those red sweet-peas together, dear, in that bowl. No, not any pink ones. I don't like two colours together unless they match. It is not artistic."
Zella thought she knew better, but lacked the courage to say so. As a compromise, she thrust one or two white sprays among the red. Mrs. Lloyd-Evans gently removed them.
"I keep all the white ones apart," she said in a voice that hinted at solemnity. "Put them in these two little silver vases, dear, and bring them into the drawing-room."
Zella, feeling inexplicably depressed, obeyed.
"You see," explained her aunt, "I only put white flowers on this little velvet table in the corner—my little shrine."
The little shrine was loaded with silver-framed photographs of those friends and relations of Mrs. Lloyd-Evans who had departed this life.
She placed her white sweet-peas before the central photograph, an enlarged one of Archie, the baby son who had died.
"I call this my In Memorial table," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans in hushed accents.
"In Memoriam?"
"In Memorial, dear," corrected Mrs. Lloyd-Evans firmly. "When you are a little older, you will know what that means. A very beautiful poem has been written about it."
Zella was outraged at having it supposed that she did not know her Tennyson.
"I have read 'In Memoriam,' " she said coldly, "and all Tennyson's poems."
"I don't suppose you've read them all, dear. He wrote a great many, and even Aunt Marianne has never had time to read all through the book," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, unperturbed. "Put those white roses there, Zella, in front of poor grandpapa."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans patted the sweet-peas delicately once or twice with her thumb and finger.
"I always think it's the last little touch that makes all the difference in arranging flowers," she observed.
The last little touch did not seem to Zella to have made much appreciable difference to the sweet-peas, but they looked very nice against the massive silver of Archie's frame.
"Is that little cousin Archie?" she asked in reverent tones, knowing perfectly well that it was, but feeling instinctively that decorum forbade taking even the most obvious facts for granted when dealing with an In Memorial table.
"Yes, darling. You know poor dear little Cousin Archie was only five when he was taken away from us. Aunt Marianne can hardly bear to speak of it. Ah, Zella, life is very sad! but only a mother who has lost her child can really know what suffering means."
Zella felt rather resentful.