“Yes, that’s it,” he said excitedly. “Go on, please; keep your position and talk some nonsense to me; you are irresistible when you talk nonsense, Stargarde. Come now, you think me handsome, don’t you?”
“Superlatively handsome, Brian,” and she laughed gently at him.
“And sweet-tempered?”
“Exquisitely so; and personally I have no objection to continuing this,” she said, lifting her head from his arm, “but there is a dear old man in a night-cap at that window over there who is peeping at us in petrified astonishment.”
“Ugh! you brute,” said Camperdown, turning to shake a fist at him, “go and get married.”
“You absurd boy,” said Stargarde, pulling at his arm; “come home; the poor creature may be married already.”
“Poor creature! Stargarde, do you think marriage an affliction?” And then Camperdown’s conversation became of a nature too personal and sentimental to be of interest to any one but to the woman who loved him so devotedly that in her opinion, “even his failings leaned to virtue’s side.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
BLIND
Very quietly the warm weeks of July slipped away. Valentine had long since recovered, but had not yet been seen beyond the precincts of the cottage.
On a calm Sunday afternoon Vivienne left Mrs. Colonibel’s room and went to wander about under the pines. Absently straying nearer the cottage than she was in the habit of doing, for she knew that Valentine did not wish to see her, she suddenly came upon him lying on his back on a grassy knoll, his hands crossed under his head, his face turned up to the sky, and in “a voice as sweet as the note of the charmed lute” caroling cheerfully the old song: