“What would you do if you were in our place? If Jean were like me, and you loved her, but could not marry?”
Robert’s eyes craved pardon, but his lips did not hesitate:
“I should take a passage in the first boat, and put the width of the world between us.”
Chapter Eighteen.
The Reaper.
Robert and Jean made no further remonstrance, but the consciousness of their disapproval was a weight from which Vanna could only escape in the company of Piers himself. Alone with him in the shelter of the den she tasted content, all the more perfect from the contrast with darker hours. Encircled by Piers’s arms, with Piers’s eyes looking into hers, the world itself had no power to touch her, and she found herself translated into that woman’s kingdom where everything that she did was right and beautiful.
“Jean does not approve of me, Piers. She thinks I am acting unfairly by you.”
“My Heart, why worry about Jean? She is a child—the most charming and lovable of children, but still a child. You have more brains in your little finger than she has in her whole head. She is incapable of understanding your sentiments.”