“There was no legal appointment,” he said, pushing his fur cap farther back on his head. “We took charge of you on our own responsibility.”
“But my father—when he died did he not ask you to take charge of my money and educate me?”
“What money?” and Mr. Armour’s eyes grew colder as he fixed them on her.
“Whatever my father left me,” said Vivienne patiently. “I don’t know anything about it, except that it is safe in your hands, and that I want to give some of it to Stargarde if I go to live with her.”
Mr. Armour’s gaze wandered all about him before he answered her. Then he said quietly: “Where would your father—a clerk on a salary—accumulate money to leave you?”
“But what have I been living on?” said Vivienne in surprise.
“I leave that to your imagination.”
“Have you been supporting me all these years?” she asked, her face suffused with color.
“Again I reply that I leave that to your imagination,” he said, twisting an icicle off a window that they were passing.
She stopped suddenly and covered her eyes with her hands. Mr. Armour scanned her narrowly. Was she trying to impress him? No; her emotion was genuine. Her gloved fingers, held like bars over her crimson, almost purple cheeks, were outward and mute signs of inward suffering.