As his hand moved on the hand-brake I said, in a small voice: "Monsieur de Valmy."
The hand paused. "Yes?"
"Before you take me back I-I'd like to apologise. I'm most awfully sorry, really I am."
"Apologise? And for what? My dear, ma'am-"
I said: "Don't be so nice about it, please! I know it was really my fault and you're making me feel a worm!" I heard him laugh, but I went on doggedly and not very clearly: "I had no business to be in the road and you saved my life by doing what you did and then I went and was rude to you and you were nothing but nice to me when ninety-nine drivers out of a hundred would have blasted me from here to Madagascar, and it's true, I do feel a worm. An utter crawling worm! And"-I took breath and finished idiotically-"if you've damaged your car you can stop it out of my wages!"
He was still laughing at me. "Thank you. But it's not damaged, as it happens."
"Is that the truth?" I asked suspiciously.
"Yes. Not a scratch. I thought I heard something as she skidded, but it was only a bit of a fallen branch hitting the wheel. Not a mark. So no apologies please, Miss Martin. If anybody should apologise, it's I. I believe I swore at you. I'm sorry."
"That's all right," I said, a little awkwardly. "We were both a bit shaken up, I suppose. I didn't quite know where I was or what I was saying."
He said nothing. He seemed to be waiting. He made no move to start the car. I stole a sidelong look at him and saw that he was watching me steadily, with the amusement gone from his face. It was an oddly daunting look, and, though he had been much nicer to me than I deserved, I found that I was gripping my hands between my knees to give myself courage to go on.
I said: "I knew so little about what I was saying that I'm afraid I gave myself away to you."
"When you spoke to me in French." It was not a question.
"Yes."
His hand moved to the ignition, and the engine died. He cut off the headlights, so that the car stood islanded in the little glow of side and tail-lamps. He half-turned towards me, his shoulder propped back against the door. I couldn't see his face now, and his voice told me, nothing. He said: "This is interesting. So I was right?"
"That they didn't know I was partly French when I got the job? Yes."
He said: "I'm not your employer, you know. You don't have to explain. But as a matter of curiosity, do I understand that you did deliberately deceive my father and Madame de Valmy over this?"
"I-I'm afraid so."
"Why?"
"Because I wanted the job."
"But I don't see why-"
I pressed my hands tightly together, and said carefully: "I needed the job. I-I'll try and tell you why, though I don't suppose you'll understand…" He started to say something but I went on quickly and not very coherently: "I'm partly French and I was brought up in Paris. When I was fourteen Maman and Daddy were killed in a plane crash. Daddy was writing a script for a film to be made in Venice, and Maman went with him for the holiday. The-oh, the details don't matter, but I finished up in an orphanage in London… I don't know if you've ever been inside an orphanage?"
"No."
"Well, the details don't matter there, either. They were very kind to me. But I wanted-oh, to live, to find some place in the world that was mine, and somehow I seemed to be getting nowhere. My schooling was all to blazes, what with the war and -and everything, so I can't do much, but I got a job at a small private school. I-I wasn't very happy there, either. Then when one of our governors heard that Madame de Valmy wanted an English governess it seemed like a gift from heaven. I told you I'm not qualified to do much, but I can look after children and I knew I could make a good job of Philippe's English and I thought it would be so wonderful to be in France and living in a real home again."
He said, very dryly: "So you came to Valmy."
"Yes. That's all."
There was a pause. He said: "I do understand, I think. But there was no need to explain all this to me, you know. I've no right to question you."
I said shyly: "I felt I sort of owed you something. And you did ask me why I wanted the job."
"No. You misunderstand me. I asked you why you had deceived my father and Héloïse about it."
I began, rather stupidly: "I told you-"
"I should have said, rather, why you had to deceive them. I'm not concerned in the least with the fact that you did do so." I caught the glimmer of a smile. "I merely find myself wondering why it was necessary. Are you trying to tell me that you concealed the fact you were partly French because you wouldn't in that case have got the job?"
"I-yes, more or less."
A little silence. "Indeed."
"It wasn't put like that," I said hastily, “not said in so many words. But-but I honestly did get the impression that it might have mattered. I mean, once we had got past the point where I should have told Madame de Valmy I couldn't very well go back and confess or she'd have thought there was something queer about me and she'd never have looked at me. And she'd made rather a lot of the fact that I wouldn't be tempted to lapse into French when I was talking to Philippe-I'm supposed always to talk to him in English, you see. I didn't really see that it mattered, myself, because I could have taken care to speak English with him anyway, but-well, she was so emphatic about it that I-oh, I just let it slide. I know I was silly," I finished miserably, "and it's such a stupid little thing, but there it is."
"And I suppose I'm to understand," he said, still rather dryly, "that they still don't know."
"Yes."
"I see." To my relief he was beginning to sound amused again. "Haven't you found that such a deception-I'm sorry I started by using such a harsh term for it-has its socially embarrassing moments?"
"You mean overhearing things I'm not meant to? No, because Monsieur's and Madame's manners are too good." Here he laughed outright, and I said rather confusedly: "I mean- when I meet them without Philippe they always talk English, and when I take Philippe to see them they talk about his lessons, which I know about anyway; and in any case I don't listen."
He said: "Well, I should stop worrying about it. As far as I can see it can hardly matter one way or the other." He turned in his seat and started the engine. The lights sprang up. I could see him smiling. "And I certainly didn't mean to add insult to injury by turning this into an inquisition! Forgive me; it's not my affair."
"Monsieur," I said quickly, in a rather small voice.
"Yes?"
"I-I wonder if you'd not-I mean-" I floundered and stopped.
He gave me a quick glance. "You wondered if I'd not give you away?"
"Yes. Please," I added, feeling even smaller.
There was a fractional pause. "For what it's worth," said Raoul de Valmy, slowly, "I shan't… And now I think we'd better make tracks…"
The car moved forward and took the first slope at a decorous speed.
He drove in silence, and I had time to reflect with wry surprise that shock produces some very odd after-effects. What on earth had impelled me to blurt out that naive and stumbling betrayal of my pathetic needs to Raoul de Valmy's no doubt hard-bitten sophistication? Daddy and Maman… they were very kind to me at the orphanage… What did it matter to him? A dreary little fool, that was what he'd think of me. And that's what I was, anyway, I thought, remembering my depression of earlier that evening. I bit my lip. What did it matter anyway? He probably hadn't even been listening. He had more important things than Philippe's governess on his mind. Bellevigne, for instance, or whatever had driven him up to see his father in the face of what appeared to be his normal welcome at the Château Valmy.