“You are so much respected,” she said, “every one will trust you, though you have no positive proof.”
“Yet I wish I had it, Vivienne.”
“You sigh,” she returned, “and yet you are not unhappy, are you?”
“Unhappy? No; I was never so near happiness in my life.”
“Near it and not quite there,” she responded, as they glided into the shadow of the boat-house.
She it was who usually did the talking when they were together. Armour had a way of listening to her and looking unutterable things. Just now he took her hand and held it a minute in silence.
“Just think that thought aloud,” she said curiously.
He seemed to be overcoming some scruple to voice his emotion, then he said in a choking voice: “I may be foolish, but there is a horrible suspicion upon me that we are at a crisis in our affairs. I may have to give you up. If I do—if I do, Vivienne, it will kill me as surely as if——”
“Stop, stop,” she said, playfully putting her hands up to her ears. “I will not hear such tragic nonsense. Who is there that would come between us?”
“Your father.”