“I cannot endure a mystery,” he said sternly.
“Nor I,” said Vivienne demurely; “but really, Mr. Armour, I do not wish to tell you.”
“Those Irish people are spoiling her,” he reflected. Vivienne was watching him and after a time she said relentingly:
“However, it is a slight thing—you may think it worse than it is if I do not tell you. I”—proudly—"did not wish Captain Macartney to be the first to tell you lest, lest——"
“Lest what?”
“Lest you should seem too glad to get rid of me,” she concluded.
“What do you mean?” he asked haughtily.
Vivienne pushed back her chair and stepped a little farther away from him. “You may think that because I am young, Mr. Armour, I have no pride; I have. I bitterly, bitterly resent your treatment of me. I have tried to please you; never a word of praise have you given me all these years. I come back to you to be treated like an outcast. My father was a gentleman, if he was poor, and of a family superior to that of the Armours. You will be glad, glad, glad to throw me off——”
She stopped to dash away an angry tear from her cheek while Mr. Armour surveyed her in the utmost astonishment.
“You think because I am a girl I do not care,” she went on, her fine small nostrils dilating with anger. “Girls care as well as men.”