“Will you not leave him to me? I promise not to hurt his feelings. I will give him some work.”
“Yes, I will,” said Vivienne; “but why do you look at me so peculiarly. He has something to tell me,” turning vivaciously to Stargarde, “and he won’t say it.”
“Not to-night,” he replied with a sigh and a smile and a look of inexpressible affection.
CHAPTER XXXV
HER WEDDING DAY
“A wild bird in a cage; a trapped beauty and a disconsolate beast,” muttered Camperdown late in the evening of the day of his marriage.
He sat in a corner of his drawing room, his eyes riveted on Stargarde’s back as she stood holding aside the lace window curtain and gazing out into the street.
“It seems to me,” he went on grumblingly, “that I’ve seen a picture called ‘Alone’ or ‘At Last’ or some such rubbishy name, where a bridegroom, and bride having got rid of all their dear friends and relatives are hanging on each other’s necks; this isn’t much like it,” grimly. “What is it now, Stargarde?”
“I thought I heard a child crying in the street,” she said, coming to rest on the sofa beside him.
“You are nervous,” he said, smoothing back the curls from her brow, and noting with a pang at his heart the unearthly pallor of her face, from which every vestige of its usually delicate color had fled. “Your entire specialized apparatus for receiving irritation is up in arms.”
“I am usually counted a steady, firm person, Brian.”