"Perhaps to the house of a pirate?" suggested Anne-Hilarion hopefully.
This time La Vireville laughed outright. "My child, what an imagination you have! No; to the house of my mother. She lives there."
"Why?" inquired his charge.
La Vireville did not answer for a moment. "For various reasons," he replied, at length. "One of them you will see in a few minutes."
"I should think," observed Anne, looking about him as they went on, "that it was in a big wood like this, where nobody could see them, that the two brothers of Liddesdale met and fought."
"Who were they?" asked the Frenchman. "I never heard of them."
"They are in a story of Elspeth's that she told me once. They fought about a lady, and the lady was false to both of them. Is that why people generally fight duels, M. le Chevalier?"
La Vireville switched at an anemone with a hazel twig that he had pulled off.
"Good God!" he exclaimed to himself. "It is not the only reason, child," he returned. "But duels are not subjects for little boys to talk about."
Ordinarily Anne-Hilarion would have been deterred at once by a tone and a phraseology so foreign to the speaker, as he knew him, but he was undeniably wrought upon by his surroundings, and pursued the forbidden topic.