He's looking very well, very fit, but Mrs Lacy was quite right the other day when she said he had been on the verge of a breakdown last year, though it was tactless of her to say so in front of him.
That's why you are so good for him.
You are fresh and young and — and sensible, you have nothing to do with all that time that has gone.
Forget it, Mrs de Winter, forget it, as he has done, thank heaven, and the rest of us.
We none of us want to bring back the past. Maxim least of all.
And it's up to you, you know, to lead us away from it. Not to take us back there again.'
He was right, of course he was right.
Dear good Frank, my friend, my ally.
I had been selfish and hypersensitive, a martyr to my own inferiority complex.
'I ought to have told you all this before,' I said.
'I wish you had,' he said.
'I might have spared you some worry.'
'I feel happier,' I said, 'much happier.
And I've got you for my friend whatever happens, haven't I, Frank?'
'Yes, indeed,' he said.
We were out of the dark wooded drive and into the light again.
The rhododendrons were upon us.
Their hour would soon be over.
Already they looked a little overblown, a little faded.
Next month the petals would fall one by one from the great faces, and the gardeners would come and sweep them away.
Theirs was a brief beauty. Not lasting very long.
'Frank,' I said, 'before we put an end to this conversation, for ever let's say, will you promise to answer me one thing, quite truthfully?'
He paused, looking at me a little suspiciously.
"That's not quite fair,' he said, 'you might ask me something that I should not be able to answer, something quite impossible.'
'No,' I said, 'it's not that sort of question.
It's not intimate or personal, or anything like that.'
'Very well, I'll do my best,' he said.
We came round the sweep of the drive and Manderley was before us, serene and peaceful in the hollow of the lawns, surprising me as it always did, with its perfect symmetry and grace, its great simplicity.
The sunlight flickered on the mullioned windows, and there was a soft rusted glow about the stone walls where the lichen clung.
A thin column of smoke curled from the library chimney.
I bit my thumbnail, watching Frank out of the tail of my eye.
'Tell me,' I said, my voice casual, not caring a bit, 'tell me, was Rebecca very beautiful?'
Frank waited a moment.
I could not see his face. He was looking away from me towards the house.
'Yes,' he said slowly, 'yes, I suppose she was the most beautiful creature I ever saw in my life.'
We went up the steps then to the hall, and I rang the bell for tea.
Chapter twelve
I did not see much of Mrs Danvers.
She kept very much to herself.
She still rang the house telephone to the morning-room every day and submitted the menu to me as a matter of form, but that was the limit of our intercourse.
She had engaged a maid for me, Clarice, the daughter of somebody on the estate, a nice quiet well-mannered girl, who, thank heaven, had never been in service before and had no alarming standards.
I think she was the only person in the house who stood in awe of me.
To her I was the mistress: I was Mrs de Winter.
The possible gossip of the others could not affect her.
She had been away for some time, brought up by an aunt fifteen miles away, and in a sense she was as new to Manderley as I was.
I felt at ease with her.
I did not mind saying
'Oh, Clarice, would you mend my stocking?"
The housemaid Alice had been so superior.
I used to sneak my chemise and nightgowns out of my drawer and mend them myself rather than ask her to do them.