Some people would consider him attractive.
Girls in sweet shops giggling behind the counter, and girls who gave one programmes in a cinema.
I knew how he would look at them, smiling, and half whistling a tune under his breath.
The sort of look and the type of whistle that would make one feel uncomfortable.
I wondered how well he knew Manderley.
He seemed quite at home, and Jasper certainly recognised him, but these two facts did not fit in with Maxim's words to Mrs Danvers.
And I could not connect him with my idea of Rebecca.
Rebecca, with her beauty, her charm, her breeding, why did she have a cousin like Jack Favell?
It was wrong, out of all proportion.
I decided he must be the skeleton in the family cupboard, and Rebecca with her generosity had taken pity on him from time to time and invited him to Manderley, perhaps when Maxim was from home, knowing his dislike.
There had been some argument about it probably, Rebecca defending him, and ever after this perhaps a slight awkwardness whenever his name was mentioned.
As I sat down to dinner in the dining-room in my accustomed place, with Maxim at the head of the table, I pictured Rebecca sitting in where I sat now, picking up her fork for the fish, and then the telephone ringing and Frith coming into the room and saying
'Mr Favell on the phone, Madam, wishing to speak to you,' and Rebecca would get up from her chair with a quick glance at Maxim, who would not say anything, who would go on eating his fish.
And when she came back, having finished her conversation, and sat down in her place again, Rebecca would begin talking about something different, in a gay, careless way, to cover up the little cloud between them.
At first Maxim would be glum, answering in monosyllables, but little by little she would win his humour back again, telling him some story of her day, about someone she had seen in Kerrith, and when they had finished the next course he would be laughing again, looking at her and smiling, putting out his hand to her across the table.
'What the devil are you thinking about?' said Maxim.
I started, the colour flooding my face, for in that brief moment, sixty seconds in time perhaps, I had so identified myself with Rebecca that my own dull self did not exist, had never come to Manderley.
I had gone back in thought and in person to the days that were gone.
'Do you know you were going through the most extraordinary antics instead of eating your fish?' said Maxim.
'First you listened, as though you heard the telephone, and then your lips moved, and you threw half a glance at me.
And you shook your head, and smiled, and shrugged your shoulders.
All in about a second.
Are you practising your appearance for the fancy dress ball?'
He looked across at me, laughing, and I wondered what he would say if he really knew my thoughts, my heart, and my mind, and that for one second he had been the Maxim of another year, and I had been Rebecca.
'You look like a little criminal,' he said, 'what is it?'
'Nothing,' I said quickly,
'I wasn't doing anything.'
'Tell me what you were thinking?'
'Why should I?
You never tell me what you are thinking about.'
'I don't think you've ever asked me, have you?'
'Yes, I did once.'
'I don't remember.'
'We were in the library.'
'Very probably.
What did I say?'
'You told me you were wondering who had been chosen to play for Surrey against Middlesex.'
Maxim laughed again.
'What a disappointment to you.
What did you hope I was thinking?'
'Something very different.'
'What sort of thing?'
'Oh, I don't know.'
'No, I don't suppose you do.
If I told you I was thinking about Surrey and Middlesex I was thinking about Surrey and Middlesex.
Men are simpler than you imagine, my sweet child.
But what goes on in the twisted tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.
Do you know, you did not look a bit like yourself just now?
You had quite a different expression on your face.'
'I did?