“But there is a great mistake. Who could have told you anything so preposterous? I am much obliged to you for finding myself on the right side of the water.”
“Well,” she said, “we will each keep our private views on the matter. Now, tell me, what are you going to do?”
He hesitated.
“I am going to walk to Auray, and—take the train back to Paris.”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head; “we will drive you to Auray. You must sleep there, and to-morrow you can decide whether to go to Paris or to come with us to Quimper.”
“Do you mean that?” he asked, eagerly, speaking to her, but looking at Kitty.
“Yes,” said Mrs Lascelles, quietly. Nobody heard the little sigh which fell from her lips, and if she looked pale, they thought it was the result of the storm.
There is a charming, picturesque cheerfulness about Quimper. The storm of the preceding day had left the air clear and delicious; the sunset colouring fell very softly on the delicate cathedral spires, on the shallow brawling river, on the trees which bordered the broad promenade by its side. Numbers of people were standing or sitting about, but there were two for whom, all their lives long, the beauty of that sunset will never be equalled.
“We,” one of them was saying—“we will certainly live at Quimper,”—and then he wisely tempered his rashness—“for part of every year.”