“Your excellency,” said Vivienne, clasping her gloved hands nervously, yet speaking with unexpected firmness, “I do not know where my father is—it has seemed almost a sacrilege, in view of my approaching marriage, yet we cannot find him. I have a thought now that he may be in France. In view of what has passed this evening, you can understand my unhappiness—my distress——”
The girl was suffering intensely. Lady Vaulabel’s thoughts ran away to Ottawa, to a baby girl in a cradle there. Some day her child too would have a woman’s heart. Her lips slightly moved, and her husband caught the words, “Tell her.”
“Miss Delavigne,” he said with utmost gentleness, “I can give you some news with regard to your father; but,” he added, a little startled by the sudden change in her, “you must compose yourself.”
Her breast rose and fell convulsively, she cast down her eyes, then said falteringly: “I beg your excellency’s pardon. You may tell me anything now.”
Lord Vaulabel sprang up with a nervous gesture and paced the carpet. “It was a long time ago,” he said with assumed lightness, “nearly twenty years—I was a lad traveling through Canada with my father. We were on our way west on a hunting expedition. Boylike, I restlessly wandered through the train that we were on, delighted by the freedom from constraint in railway traveling to which I had not been accustomed in our English carriages. We were on our way to Quebec, when my attention was attracted by the unhappy, dazed appearance of a young Frenchman, who remained always in one attitude. I told my father about him, and he questioned the guard, or conductor, as one calls that official here. We approached the man—found that his name was Delavigne. I think, Miss Delavigne, that you promised to be very calm,” he said, interrupting himself and gazing in pretended quiet amusement at his listener.
His excellency however was not amused, he was intensely interested and anxious.
Vivienne had fallen on her knees, and was sobbing over Lady Vaulabel’s hand. “You know all—oh, tell me more! May God bless you for your kindness to my father.”
His excellency looked at the kneeling girl, a suspicious moisture in his eyes—the heart of a ruler is very much as the heart of another man—then lightly turning he left the room.
“Compose yourself, my poor child,” murmured Lady Vaulabel, “your father is with us. He has been one of my husband’s secretaries for years.”
“Mon cher Delavigne, how often have I told thee not to write till this hour,” said Lord Vaulabel in French, as he entered a small adjoining room, where a slender man with patient dark eyes, white hands, and a head of thick, snowy hair, sat with all the paraphernalia of a secretary about him.