At the first shock of her words, he started back with a gesture of utter detestation. He loved her, but he could not touch her mother.
Then he sprang forward, but he was too late. Neither disappointed nor surprised by his refusal, Stargarde gathered the loathsome and disgraceful specimen of fallen womanhood to her own tender bosom, and lovingly enwrapping it in her arms went out in the night.
CHAPTER XXXII
HE KISSED HER AND PROMISED
The spring was long, cold, and trying. The sun shone brightly, but the north wind sweeping over the ice-fields in the Gulf of St. Lawrence breathed chill and disconsolate on shivering Nova Scotia until well into May.
Then to the great delight of the robins, that had come back rather earlier than usual, and had been greeted by a snowstorm, there was a change in the weather. One leap and they were into the jolly summer, clad in his “cassock colored green,” and having on his head a garland. Swelling tree-buds, bursting flowers, and universal greenness prevailed. During the latter part of May, energetic work was carried on in field and garden in preparation for the brief but lovely season which lasts in the seaside province through June, July, and August, until the golden days of September and October come.
The twenty-first of June is the natal day of Halifax, and on this day an annual concert is held in the lovely Public Gardens. The flower beds are roped off, electric lights shine far overhead among the treetops, and lines of Chinese lanterns and rows of torches glow nearer the earth. Two or three military bands play favorite airs to thousands of people, who saunter to and fro listening to the music, haunting ice-cream booths, or watching the effect of fireworks set off from a small island in the center of a pond from which unhappy ducks and geese fly, quacking and gabbling their disapproval of proceedings so disturbing.
From one of these annual concerts held on a perfect June night, Mrs. Colonibel, Vivienne, Judy, and Mr. Armour were returning. Judy, exhausted by much walking to and fro on the Garden paths, had fallen asleep in the carriage with her head on Armour’s shoulder. Mrs. Colonibel and Vivienne sat with faces upturned to the dull blue of the sky listening, the one absently the other intently, to Armour’s description of the wonderful Wolf-Rayet stars.
His voice was calm and measured, yet Vivienne had known all the evening that something had happened to worry him. When they reached the house, and Mrs. Colonibel and Judy went upstairs, she lingered an instant as she said “Good-night.”
There was no response to her glance of inquiry. Whatever his trouble was he had resolved not to impart it to her, and she slowly proceeded to her room, and putting aside her hat, sank on a heap of cushions by her open window and looked out in the direction of the Arm, which lay like a dull, solid expanse of crystal at the foot of its lines of wooded hills.
It was a dark night, and she could see nothing very distinctly. There was a slight murmur in the pines about the house, but beyond that the stillness was perfect. Her thoughts were on the cottage, though she could see nothing of it. Things were not going well there. Valentine had finally taken up his abode with his father, and they rarely saw him up at the larger house. This evening Vivienne knew that Colonel Armour was entertaining some of his friends. Probably that was the cause of the shadow on her lover’s brow, for she knew that he strongly disapproved of his father’s midnight parties.