Instantly the dark eyes sought Nancy’s face.
“I have already asked her,” Adolphe St. Jacques answered quietly.
“And what did the lady say?”
The Frenchman’s eyes moved northward and rested upon the purple tops of the far-off Laurentides.
“My novena is not finished. She has yet to make her answer,” he said.
And, for the second time in their acquaintance, Nancy was conscious of the dull tugging at her heart. Forgetful of Barth, watching from the other side, she turned to look straight down into the face of St. Jacques; and Brock, who alone of them all had been taken into the heart of the Frenchman’s secret, felt it no shame to himself when the tears rushed into his clear gray eyes, as he saw the look on Nancy’s face, womanly, earnest, yet all unconscious of impending ill.
It was Churchill who broke the silence. A stranger to them all but Nancy, he yet could not fail to realize the tension of the moment. Nevertheless he assured himself that he had met those symptoms before. Nancy’s path, the past season, had been strewn with similar victims.
“Wonderful view!” he said calmly.
The platitude broke the strain. St. Jacques sat up and put on his cap, and Barth fumbled for his glasses. Above them, Brock openly rubbed his eyes with the bunched-up fingers of his gloves.
“So glad you like it, Joe! It is wonderful; and then it is endeared to me by all manner of associations. Away up there in those blue hills, Mr. Barth sprained his ankle; M. St. Jacques and I spent an afternoon in this road just underneath the cliff, and,” her eyes sought Brock’s eyes mockingly; “and there aren’t ten blocks in the entire city that can’t mark some sort of a skirmish between the American and Canadian forces.”