“I should have thought one would feel more at home in the atmosphere one grew up in. But, as a matter of fact, you are wrong about the atmosphere here—it is all business really, and nothing else.”
“Father says you are not really a business man. And I think he is right.”
“The facts would seem to prove your father wrong, Froken Vivild.”
“He says you are—extraordinary. And that you’ve a lucky sense.”
“Maybe. It comes to the same thing. I fancy success in business is largely a matter of luck. Do you know what has helped me most all along? Well, before I started in business, I was well known, in a way, from my efforts in another direction. Not to put too fine a point on it—people believed me mad. And, consequently, everything I set out to do was regarded as more madness. It was the best thing that could have been—and I’m very much obliged to the people who thought so....”
A little later, Ormarr saw his guests to the gate, and stood watching them as they left, arm in arm.
“A lovely creature,” he thought. “The graceful way she walks.... But a child, no more. And he—I wonder how he will treat her. I’m afraid she will have a hard time of it with him. Perhaps when all’s said and done, she would have been better off with me.”
He stood watching the dainty figure as it receded, noting the graceful curves, and the mass of brown hair under the wide-brimmed hat.
“A dream,” he mused. “One of life’s lovely dreams....”
He closed the gate and walked up towards the house.