“I wasn’t thinking about her, but of something else,” said Harry hastily.
“Ah, well, I wasn’t. I’ve got a little bit of an income, a modest one I suppose you’d call it, and—but look there!”
“What at?” said Harry, whose eyes were shut, and his thoughts far away.
“Them. They’re going for a walk. Why, Hal, old chap, they saw us come down here.”
Harry started into wakefulness, and realised the fact that his sister and Madelaine Van Heldre were passing before them, but down by the water’s edge, while the young men were close up under the towering cliff.
“Let’s follow them,” said Pradelle eagerly.
“Wait a moment.”
Harry waited to think, and scraps of his aunt’s remarks floated through his brain respecting the fair daughters of France, who would fall at the feet of the young count when he succeeded to his property, and the castle in the air which she reconstructed for him to see mentally.
Harry cogitated. The daughters of France were no doubt very lovely, but they were imaginative; and though Madelaine Van Heldre might, as his aunt said, not be of the pure Huguenot blood, still that fact did not seem to matter to him. For that was not imagination before him, but the bright, natural, clever girl whom he had known from childhood, his old playfellow, who had always seemed to supply a something wanting in his mental organisation, the girl who had led him and influenced his career, and whom he now told himself he loved very dearly, principally because he felt bound to look up to her and submit to all she said.
It was a very raw, green, and acrid kind of love, though Harry Vine was not aware of the fact, and he leaped to his feet.