Doom gave a significant exclamation: he was recalling that rumour had Shira Glen for his daughter's favourite trysting-place.
“Rain or shine,” said Count Victor, delighting in such whole-souled rapture, delighting in that bright, unwearied eye, that curious turn of phrase that made her in English half a foreigner like himself—“Rain or shine, it is a country of many charms.”
“But now you are too large in your praise,” she said, not quite so warmly. “I do not expect you to think it is a perfect country-side at any time and all times; and it is but natural that you should love the country of France, that I have been told is a brave and beautiful country, and a country I am sometimes loving myself because of its hospitality to folk that we know. I know it is a country of brave men, and sometimes I am wondering if it is the same for beautiful women. Tell me!” and she leaned on an arm that shone warm, soft, and thrilling from the short sleeve of her gown, and put the sweetest of chins upon a hand for the wringing of hearts.
Montaiglon looked into those eyes, so frank and yet profound, and straight became a rebel. “Mademoiselle Olivia,” said he, indifferently (oh, Cecile! oh, Cecile!), “they are considered not unpleasing; but for myself, perhaps acquaintance has spoiled the illusion.”
She did not like that at all; her eyes grew proud and unbelieving.
“When I was speaking of the brave men of France,” said she, “I fancied perhaps they would tell what they really thought—even to a woman.” And he felt very much ashamed of himself.
“Ah! well, to tell the truth, mademoiselle,” he confessed, “I have known very beautiful ones among them, and many that I liked, and still must think of with affection. Mort de ma vie! am I not the very slave of your sex, that for all the charms, the goodness, the kindnesses and purities, is a continual reproach to mine? In the least perfect of them I have never failed to find something to remind me of my little mother.”
“And now I think that is much better,” said Olivia, heartily, her eyes sparkling at that concluding filial note. “I would not care at all for a man to come from his own land and pretend to me that he had no mind for the beautiful women and the good women he had seen there. No; it would not deceive me, that; it would not give me any pleasure. We have a proverb in the Highlands, that Annapla will often be saying, that the rook thinks the pigeon hen would be bonny if her wings were black; and that is a seanfhacal—that is an old-word that is true.”
“If I seemed to forget France and what I have seen there of Youth and Beauty,” said Count Victor, “it is, I swear it is—it is—”
“It is because you would be pleasant to a simple Highland girl,” said Olivia, with just a hint of laughter in her eyes.