Armour’s high spirits suddenly left him. “Vivienne, I hate to return to that house,” he said. “I wish I could take you and turn my back on it forever. Would you be willing to leave Nova Scotia? Would you like to live in France?” and he put his arm around her as he skated slowly beside her.
“For what reason, Stanton?”
“I am sick to death of Halifax, and do you know, darling, that I have, without consulting you, found out that the old Lacy d’Entreville château is for sale? Will you go and live there with me by that French river that you love so much?”
Vivienne stopped skating, and looked up in surprise at him. They were in the midst of a deathly solitude. Not a creature was near, not a sound was heard, now that the swift striking of their skates against the ice had ceased.
“Stanton,” she said dreamily, “I told you about Orléans, then later on of the other place still dearer to me for my mother’s sake, of the strange mass of buildings heaped up beside the Loire, and the little village crouching below. Perhaps I said too much of my pleasure when I beheld those walls, and saw the tapestried chambers of my ancestors, and the great tower with its sloping ascent, where a carriage and pair could start from the town and drive up into the château——”
“Vivienne,” gently, “it was not any grandeur in your picture that touched me. It was the homeliness of it; the comfort of Madame la Princess’ apartments, the loneliness of the servants, the care they were giving even to the dogs of their absent mistress, the interest of the villagers in you——”
“Yes,” said Vivienne, “when we went into the lodge of the concierge, the dogs of the princess occupied all the comfortable chairs in the room, and the old man and woman sat on the stone window ledge. Ah, those white hounds! They were charming, Stanton, and they licked my hands.”
“The princess will sell the château, reasonably too,” said Armour kissing Vivienne’s abstracted face. “You will go, sweetheart? We can live in Paris for half the year.”
“Stanton,” said the girl with startling emphasis, “did I tell you that it was like home to me?”
“No, my child, but I guessed that it might easily become so.”