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love you, and yet I can never marry you. For the last time I will kiss
you——”
“There never was a first time,” murmured Armour, who,
nevertheless, was deeply moved by her emotion.
“And I will tell you,” she continued, “that you have won what
many another man has tried to get and never will get at all, the
affection and adoration and sympathy of one foolish woman’s heart.”
“Why foolish?” he asked, putting up a hand to try to induce her to
come from behind him so that he might see her face.
She clung the closer to his neck. “Because,” she said, “you have
found out that I love you. I should never have allowed you to know
it. I have fretted over it and worried and cried till I was ill, but it was
of no use.”
“It was fate,” he said; “you will marry me?”
“Good-night,” she murmured; “good-night, good-night. You will
never see me like this again.”
He felt her warm lips on his ear and cheek, then she was gone. He
hastily got up and had one glimpse of her before she disappeared
into her room, one hand clasping the train of her white gown, her
head carried well in the air.
“Not to be repeated, eh?” he muttered disapprovingly. “Well, we’ll
see about that,” and with eyes bent thoughtfully on the floor he too
left the room. In the hall he ran against Camperdown. “How is
Stargarde?” he asked.
“All right; how is ma’m’selle?”
“All wrong,” and Armour’s strong white teeth gleamed for an
instant through his heavy mustache. Then he went on his way
downstairs, trying to recall to his mind a gipsy prophecy uttered
about him when he was a lad, strolling one day about the environs
of Halifax with Étienne Delavigne. Ah, this was it; the old woman,
thrusting her wedge-shaped face close to his, had muttered it twice:
“Self first, wife second, friends a matter of indifference, reputation
dearer than life.”
“A part of it has come true,” said Armour heavily; “I wonder what
about the rest?”
 CHAPTER XXVIII
MISKEPT ACCOUNTS

Vivienne kept her word. When Armour got up the next morning he
found that she had already gone to the Pavilion with Stargarde.
With much inward chafing and impatience he listened to Judy,
who prattled of her speedy return, and to Mrs. Colonibel who over
their late breakfast table talked with languid irritability of several
occurrences that had displeased her during the course of the ball.
During the day he called at the Pavilion. Vivienne was out and
Stargarde received him.
“Yes, she has told me everything,” she said sympathetically; “and
Stanton, you must have patience with her. She is in a terribly
disturbed state of mind. You are so different from her and she is so
young and does not altogether understand that your temperament is
a total contrast to hers.”
“I have great respect for your judgment,” said Armour quietly. “I
shall do as you say. Do you think that she will make a suitable wife
for me?”
“Yes, oh yes,” said Stargarde enthusiastically; “but do not forget
that it is not the master of Pinewood with whom she has fallen in
love—it is the man. Your social position and wealth are small matters
to her. It is your undivided attention that she craves.”
“She has it,” he said heartily, “as far as any woman can.”
“She will realize that in time; in the meantime one must give her a
chance for reflection.”
“There is some difference between our ages,” said Armour
uneasily. “I wish for her sake that I were a younger man.”
 Stargarde smiled languidly. “I referred to that and she said she
would not care if you were a hundred.”
“That sounds like her,” he said with satisfaction. “I will go now lest
I should meet her.”
“Yes, do so,” said Stargarde with sweet inhospitality; “and try to
keep away from here for a time.”
“I will,” he said, and after a little further conversation he left her
and went back to what he speedily found to be a very lonely house.
There was no more cheerful girlish chatter about the halls and in the
rooms of his dwelling, for as the days went by, Judy with her usual
shrewdness discovered the situation of affairs, and calmly absented
herself from home and presented herself at the Pavilion at all
manner of unseasonable hours.
“If you have a pretty flower,” she said coolly, “and some one else
picks it, you can at least go and sit down beside it and enjoy its
perfume, though why this particular hothouse bloom should choose
to transplant itself among weeds and stubble is more than I can
imagine—making petticoats and aprons for old women too. Stuff and
nonsense! She’ll soon get over it.”
Weeks passed away and Armour in a kind of dull resignation
continued his solitary life. Judy was rarely at home and Mrs.
Colonibel had grown strangely quiet and haggard. She was also
losing her flesh. Armour did not know what was the matter with her,
though he knew quite well what ailed his brother, who at home was
always dull now, never merry, and who so often returned from the
town with a bright red spot in each cheek.
At such times Armour eyed him keenly and suspiciously, for he
knew that the red spots betokened a visit to the Pavilion.
“Valentine has developed quite a fondness for Stargarde’s society,”
said Judy one day in a vexed way. “I wish that he would stay at
home. No one is happy when he is about, for he teases unmercifully,
from the dog up to the human beings.”
Camperdown disapproved hugely of the situation of affairs. “It is
always the unexpected that occurs,” he said one day to Stargarde;
“but I didn’t expect such a block as this. I’m going to interfere. That
girl is worrying you to death.”
 “No, she is not,” said Stargarde; “she really is not, Brian.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said stoutly. “Anyway, she’s worrying me,
and her mission in the world is to keep that family together. I’m
going to talk to her.”
“Don’t offend her, Brian.”
“There now—she is coming between us,” he growled. “I’ll not have
it.”
A day or two later came his chance for a conversation with
Vivienne. Accompanied by Stargarde’s dog she had left the Pavilion
immediately after breakfast, and had gone for an early
constitutional. She liked to saunter along the streets and look in the
shop windows before the rosy-cheeked matrons and maids came
trooping from north, south, and west to do their shopping in the
business quarter of the town, which lies along the water’s edge.
As she stood examining with a critical and approving eye the many
soft fur garments hung up in a shop window, Dr. Camperdown came
suddenly around the corner of the street, swinging himself carelessly
along, his hands in the pockets of his huge raccoon coat, in which he
looked like a grizzly bear—amiable or unamiable as his humor
happened to be.
Catching sight of Vivienne he moderated his pace, and came to a
stop without being perceived by her. As the girl examined a waxen
lady who was enveloped in a complete suit of sealskin, Dr.
Camperdown examined her.
“Wax doll better equipped for a walk than girl is,” he soliloquized.
“Girl’s dress might do for Parisian boulevards—too thin for Halifax
winter,” and he surveyed disapprovingly the quiet elegance of
Vivienne’s brown cloth costume.
Her attire was certainly better suited for a summer or autumn day
than one in February, and she shivered slightly as she stood before
him.
“French shoes too,” he muttered, looking down at her feet. “No
overshoes or rubbers.” And as if unwilling to be protected from the
cold while she was suffering from it, he angrily swung off his bulky
coat, and threw it over his shoulder, saying as he did so, “Little
simpleton, her mind is so preoccupied that she doesn’t know what
she puts on.”
Roused by his half-uttered words, the girl turned around. “Good-
morning,” he said grimly. “Which is your pet form of lung disease? If
you just mention it you’re likely to have it.”
“Ah, Dr. Camperdown, is it you?” she said. “You know that I do not
love affliction in any shape. Remember how I grieved over my cold.”
“You’re on the high road to something worse than a cold now,” he
said. “Have you no thicker mantle than that; no warm bonnet?”
“I wear neither mantles nor bonnets,” she replied, pressing her
hands into two tiny pockets at the sides of her jacket and looking up
smilingly at him. “And I was sufficiently warm in this gown in
Scotland.”
“Old Scotland isn’t New Scotland,” he grumbled. “They have high
winds there, high enough to take the slates off the roofs, but not
piercing enough to lay your heart open, as they do here. You didn’t
look out to see what sort of a day it was before you left the house;
come now, did you?”
“Possibly I did not,” said Vivienne.
“You didn’t,” he said; “I know you didn’t. Come, let us walk on
briskly, lest you take cold. When are you going to cease being
obdurate? You needn’t stare at me, ma’m’selle, I’m not afraid of your
black eyes. Look here, I’ve something to show you,” and he paused
on a street corner and drew out several pieces of paper.
The first one was a ridiculous caricature of Stanton Armour
standing with his hands wildly clutched in his hair, a frantic
expression on his face, which was upturned to the sky.
“He’s grappling with the biggest worry of his life here,” said her
companion, laying his finger on the sketch. “He thought he’d had
every trouble in the world, but he hadn’t.”
Vivienne looked at him inquiringly.
“He hadn’t fulfilled his destiny by falling in love. That every man
ought to marry he thought was a pernicious doctrine.”
“As it is,” she remarked with unexpected spirit.
Camperdown scowled at her. “If you don’t marry, young lady,
twenty years hence you’ll be a bad-tempered, dried-up, withered
dame that no man will want to look at.”
Vivienne shrugged her beautiful shoulders.
“See what a beast I am,” he went on; “all because I didn’t marry.
I’m too selfish to live—come now, don’t throw me pretty glances.
You can’t cajole me. I say a man or a woman who remains
unmarried without just cause for doing so, is a detestable egotist.”
Vivienne bit her lip and cast a glance in the direction of
Mascerene, who was patiently enduring every insult from a passing
quarrelsome dog.
“Let him alone, and think about Stanton,” said Camperdown
impatiently. “He fell in love, as I said. See him here overcome by the
discovery: ‘Merciful heavens, haven’t I suffered enough without
having a woman flung into my life, or rather, not a woman, a full-
grown creature, but a slender reed of a girl?’ I am sure you are sorry
for him, Miss Delavigne,” turning suddenly and subjecting her
composed features to an intense scrutiny.
“I am always sorry when a person suffering happens to be one
whom I esteem.”
“It is abominable that Stanton should have led so tortured a life,”
continued the physician; “he has been martyrizing ever since his
mother died.”
“Unfortunate man!”
“But he’s getting over it here,” unfolding another bit of paper.
“He’s thinking that it isn’t such a bad thing after all that his adored
one is just eighteen years younger than himself.”
Vivienne laughed despite herself at the disordered appearance of
her always faultlessly attired guardian, who was caricatured as
sitting at a table, his hair sticking up all over his head, his fingers
tracing with furious haste across the open page of a huge account
book the quotation,

This tough, impracticable heart

Is governed by a dainty-fingered girl.
 “Now you mustn’t laugh at this one,” he said warningly, as he
turned the paper over. “It’s too tragic. ‘Will she marry me? oh, will
she marry me?’ See, there is the wharf and the deep black water.”
Vivienne did laugh. A few spirited pencil marks showed a man and
a maid standing beside each other at the end of a wharf, against
which waves were dashing. The girl’s face was averted, the man’s
attitude plainly said, “If you don’t do as I wish you to I shall throw
myself into a watery grave.”
“Oh, put it away,” she said merrily, “or I shall bring disgrace upon
myself. I did not know that you had so great a talent for caricature.”
He put the paper in his pocket and said gloomily: “If I had a sister
and Stanton Armour asked her to marry him and she wouldn’t, I’d
shut her up somewhere.”
“What a regrettable thing for Mr. Armour that this obdurate fair
one is not related to you.”
“Obdurate? She’s not obdurate,” said the physician, surveying
Vivienne half in affection, half in irritation. “I don’t understand some
men. They beat about the bush and examine their motives, and
shilly-shally till it makes one wild to see them. Why don’t they say to
the women they love, ‘I’m going mad for love of you; you must
marry me. I’ll wait and watch, but I must have you. You shall not
marry another man‘?”
“Mr. Armour is of a different nature,” said Vivienne.
“No, he isn’t,” with a suppressed laugh; “only it takes him longer
to wake up. I don’t know what was the matter with him, unless he
was thinking of the girl rather than of himself. Perhaps he thought
that she didn’t care for him. Now he’s got a hint to the contrary, and
all the power on earth won’t keep him from urging his suit. I
suppose you didn’t know that he nearly went to the West Indies in
one of his ships two weeks ago?”
“No; I did not.”
“He has some trouble that I don’t understand,” said Camperdown.
“Anyway, I told him that if he didn’t do something to stop his
fretting, he’d be in an insane asylum within a year.”
“But he did not go away.”
 “No; something happened to prevent. He ought to go somewhere
though. Miss Delavigne, have you not been hasty?”
“I think, Dr. Camperdown, that without being a brother, you
exercise the privileges of one,” she said gravely.
“Then adopt me,” he said; “let me be your brother. If Heaven had
vouchsafed me a sister, I should have prayed that she might be like
you.”
Her eyes grew moist as she looked into his wistful face. She just
touched the large hand extended to her, but her fingers were
immediately seized in a warm grasp.
“You don’t understand,” she said, with a catch in her voice. “He
really does not care. He does not come to see me.”
“Overtures will be made you in the course of time; will you receive
them?”
“Yes,” she replied breathlessly, then she fairly ran away from him.
The overtures came sooner than she had expected. That
afternoon as she sat alone over the fire an urgent message came
over the telephone from Judy.
“Vivienne, is that you?” called the lame girl in an anxious voice.
“Yes; it is I.”
“Can you come quickly to Pinewood? No one is ill, but you must
come. I cannot explain.”
Vivienne hurried to the veranda, where she found MacDaly
lounging about. “Will you get me a carriage as quickly as possible?”
she asked.
“Yes, revered and honored lady of transcendent charms,” he
replied; then with considerable alacrity he gave direction to his long
legs to carry him as speedily as possible to the nearest cabstand.
Vivienne, with a wildly-beating heart and eyes that went roving
affectionately over every object on the well-known road to
Pinewood, soon found herself before the hall door and in Judy’s
embrace.
“Come in, come in,” was her hurried greeting. “Mamma asked me
to send for you. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I think
there is something wrong with her accounts. Stanton asked her to
bring her housekeeping books to him this afternoon. He examines
them about once a year. I fancy that she has been
misappropriating.”
Vivienne shrank from her. “Judy, what are you saying?”
“The truth, I fear,” and Judy made a detestable face. “Do you think
mamma would hesitate to steal if she thought she wouldn’t be found
out? No, indeed; but Stanton will be too sharp for her, and he is so
particular that if he finds her out he will be in a terrible rage.”
“This is a shocking thing that you are saying; surely you have
made a mistake.”
“No, I have not,” said Judy stubbornly. “I wish I had. Where did
mamma get that last set of jewelry? where those English dresses?
She must have squeezed the money out of her housekeeping.”
“Judy, I feel very much in the way; you should not have brought
me here.”
“Are you not willing to do this much for me?” said the girl. “Do you
want to see my mother turned out of doors?”
“No,” said Vivienne, throwing her arm around her neck; “but what
can I do, dear?”
“You can do more with Stanton than any one. He has been hateful
lately. A bear with two sore paws would be an angel compared with
him. I cannot hear mamma saying a word. She must be terribly
disturbed. She always begins to shriek over a slight thing. Will you
not go in?”
“Judy, I cannot,” and Vivienne drew away from her.
“Stanton is raising his voice; he must be furious,” said Judy,
placing an ear at the door. “What is he saying? ‘Leave here at once.’
Oh, Vivienne, go in, go in! Tell him that she cannot. What will people
say?”
Vivienne was standing at a little distance from her, and she did not
move till Judy threw herself upon her with a frantic, “Vivienne, she is
my mother; I do not love her, yet—yet——”
“Do not cry, darling,” said Vivienne, kissing her impulsively. “I will
do as you wish,” and she knocked at the door.
“They do not hear you,” said Judy, turning the handle; “go in and
do what you can,” and she ushered her champion into the room.
 A very quiet and unobtrusive champion she had introduced, who
stopped short in acute distress. Armour was standing with his back
to the door, yet Vivienne could see that he was in one of the terrible
rages of which Judy had told her. Mrs. Colonibel sat at a table,
staring with wide-open, glassy eyes at some account books before
her.
“Speak for me, Miss Delavigne,” she said with a gasp of relief. “I
have offended Stanton mortally. You can feel for me on account of
your father.”
Armour turned on his heel and his face underwent an immediate
change; Vivienne stretched out her hand to him. Though he were a
prey to ten-fold more evil passions than the ones which possessed
him, he yet was the man that she loved. He took her hand silently,
then he said sternly to his cousin: “Go; you make me forget you are
a woman. Let me be rid of you to-night. I hope that I shall never see
your face again.”
Mrs. Colonibel burst into a violent fit of weeping. “Oh, Stanton,
give me a little chance,” she sobbed; “a month longer, even a week,
to prepare for this. You will ruin my prospects.”
“You have heard what I said,” he replied, walking away from her
to a window. “You can’t change my resolve.”
“Intercede for me,” whispered Mrs. Colonibel as she passed
Vivienne; “he will listen to you.”
Armour stood with his hands behind his back till the door closed.
Then he looked around to see if he were alone.
Vivienne still remained—sorrowful, grieving, and saying not a
word.
“How did you come here?” he asked.
“Judy sent for me.”
“Ah,” he replied significantly.
He resumed his scrutiny of the outdoor world and for a long time
made no further remark. Vivienne slipped to a corner of a sofa. After
a time he began to pace up and down the room talking bitterly, half
to himself, half to her.
“Always the same—trust and deceit, honor and lies. They are all in
league against me. They deceive me in one direction and I am on
my guard there; then there is a change of position and I am
attacked in some other place. Vivienne,” abruptly, “I would rather
see you dead than deceitful.”
He had paused close to her, and as he spoke he gazed into her
face with piercing scrutiny.
“You do not flinch,” he said; “yet you too may be acting a part.
Have you lured me on with shy defiance and pretty girlish conceits in
order that you may count another victim?”
“I am profoundly sorry for you,” said the girl. “Your faith in human
nature has received another shock.”
“Which does not add to my charms,” he said harshly, unhappily,
and with some resentfulness. “You need not shrink from me. I’m not
going to sit down beside you.”
“Which does add to your charms for me,” said the girl with great
firmness; “and I am not shrinking from you but making a place for
you.”
His expression brightened, and he dropped on the sofa beside her
and laid his head on her shoulder like a tired child, murmuring: “You
have come back to me, dear little girl. Smooth those ugly wrinkles
from my face. I have longed to feel your hands wandering over my
head again.”
“I first loved you because you were unhappy,” said Vivienne
composedly; “but it breaks my heart to see you like this.”
“This is a moment of weakness,” he said languidly, “of mental
relaxation. This stirring of one’s emotions is a detestable thing; and I
have it all the time, I who was born for a tranquil life.”
“Tell me all your troubles,” whispered Vivienne in his ear,
“everything, everything.”
“No,” he said unexpectedly. “No,” and suddenly straightening
himself he took her in his arms. He was a strong man again, and
Vivienne fluttered a little in his grasp, blushing in deep perplexity
and wonder.
“Do you wish to go away?” he asked.
“No,” she said; “not if you will do as I wish.”
“And you wish to be mother confessor?”
“Yes; give me the history of your life, your inner life.”
 “Well—I love you,” he said.
With an intense passionate gesture the girl held her head well
back, her burning dark eyes staring hard into his flashing blue ones.
Yes, there was a strength and fervor of devotion there that she could
not doubt. She dropped the arms that she had outstretched to keep
him from her with an unutterably satisfied “Oh!” of surprise.
“A curious exclamation that,” he said teasingly; “have you nothing
more to say to me?”
She would not speak for a long time, but remained with her face
hidden in his shoulder. Finally she said: “When did you find this out?”
“It has been true all along,” he said; “only you would not believe
me.”
“Who is deceitful now?” she cried.
“I am not; I really have loved you for weeks, only I have been a
stupid, blundering fool about expressing myself. When will you marry
me?”
“I do not know. You will not send Mrs. Colonibel away, Stanton?”
“Yes I will; do not speak of her,” and his face darkened.
“Let her remain for a time.”
“Not a day.”
“Not to please me?”
“Let me tell you what she has done,” and somewhat grimly he
related the history of his cousin’s thefts.
“Why does not your face change?” he asked when he finished his
story; “why do you not look scornful and shrink from me?”
“Why should I, Stanton?”
“I come of the same stock. Flora was an Armour before she
married old Julius Colonibel for his money. This family is like a
blasted tree, whose branches drop off one by one.”
“But the trunk remains; it will be sound till it falls,” said Vivienne,
trying to enclose his unhappy figure in her arms; “and I know an ivy
that will cling to it.”
“God bless the ivy, the confiding ivy,” he muttered with a clearing
of face.
“And you will forgive Flora, Stanton?”
 “Forgive, forgive,” he repeated; “what an easy word to say and
what a hard thing to do. Shall one word be the end of her sin
against me for months?”
“You have nothing to do with her punishment,” said Vivienne
softly. “God takes care of us when we sin. Flora has already suffered.
Put that thought aside and go to make your toilet for dinner.”
“I do not wish any dinner,” he said.
Vivienne looked at him mournfully. “And I am so hungry!”
He smiled. “Well, my child, I hope for your sake that the bill of
fare is all you can desire.”
“It will not be if you are not there. The daintiest dishes will turn to
dust and ashes in my mouth.”
“How she loves me—this little girl,” he said, holding her at arms’
length and fondly inspecting her.
“It grieves me when you brood over troubles,” she continued, with
a contraction of her dark brows. “You are a true Anglo-Saxon. Try to
be light-hearted.”
“I place myself at your disposal,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”
“Ah, you have spoken; now do not retract. Go immediately to
unhappy Flora. Try to make her comprehend that you forgive her,
that she shall never be forced to leave Pinewood, that I and you also
wish her to stay.”
“No, no,” he interrupted, “I cannot agree to that.”
“Do you think I could be contented in a paradise even with you
from which unhappy souls have been expelled?” she exclaimed.
“I think that I could make you so.”
“You could not, for you would not be happy yourself. You too have
a conscience, and you know that if we are selfish we shall be
miserable. Also there may be a change in Flora, and though I shall
be fond of assuring you that our interests are identical, may I not
ask whether you will not promise me the supreme control of our
ménage?”
“I will.”
“And who always keeps his promise? You are silent, therefore I
proceed. After visiting Flora, go to your room and practise a
contented smile before your glass, then descend to the dining room
fully prepared to welcome our adored Stargarde, who will probably
come out to dinner. Will you do this?”
He hesitated.
“Then all is at an end between us,” she said tragically. “I can have
nothing more to do with a man as doleful as yourself.”
“You dear little witch,” and he put out a hand to detain her, but
her laughing face looked at him from a door across the hall, and he
was obliged to walk across to her.
“This thing has cut me deeply,” he said, “more deeply than you
can understand. If you will consent to remain here till we are
married, Flora may also stay till then—that is if she will keep out of
my sight for a day or two.”
“Would you make a business transaction of it?”
“I lay no claim to perfection.”
“Very well,” said Vivienne with a wise shake of her head, and she
went upstairs to Judy who was hanging over the railing above.
“It is shocking about Flora,” she murmured; “but if I allow him to
meditate so much on these family problems he will become
distracted.”
 CHAPTER XXIX
THE MICMAC KEEPS HIS CHARGE

February passed away, and March came—"March that blusters and

March that blows, March the pathway that leads to the rose"—the
month hailed with delight because it breaks the back of the Nova
Scotian winter.
In a lamblike and gentle manner it succeeded snowy February,
with a brilliant sun, not too high winds, and thawing, melting rivulets
in every direction running from rapidly-melting snow-banks. But after
the first of the month there was a change. Jack Frost again clouded
the windows, an icy hand was laid on the rivulets, the snow-banks
no longer decreased in size, and there were two whole weeks of
outdoor skating.
Lent had begun and the winter gayeties had ceased. Mrs.
Colonibel, missing the stimulus of a constant round of excitement
and forced to think constantly of her changed position in the
household, was a different woman.
Nominally she still retained her old place; in reality it was the
young French girl who was the mistress, who was consulted on all
possible occasions while she was ignored. She accepted the situation
with rather more grace than might have been expected and only on
rare occasions offered a protest. A kind of reluctant admiration for
Vivienne had sprung up in her breast. She knew that the girl on one
pretext and another was delaying her marriage because she feared
that Armour, though willing to indulge her on every other point
would probably be firm with regard to this one; his cousin would not
be allowed to remain in his house nor to retain the slightest
authority in household affairs—she must make room for the young
wife.
At the close of one sunny Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Colonibel
approaching her glass with a kind of horror at her altered
appearance, carefully applied some rouge to her cheeks and then
went drearily downstairs.
It was nearly dinner time, but Valentine was the only person in the
drawing room. Judy and Vivienne were with Stargarde, with whom
they spent the greater part of their time. Stanton had not yet come
and Colonel Armour was dining in town.
Valentine stood by the window, his hands behind his back, his
eyes bent on the long, glassy expanse of the Arm, where a number
of boys were skimming to and fro like swallows. He looked around as
Mrs. Colonibel entered the room. His face too, was restless and
unhappy, and to conceal it he turned his back on her and moved
toward the open conservatory door.
She took his place at the window. The huge, yellow ball of the sun
was just dropping behind the fir-topped hills on the other side of the
Arm. The spiked tree points stood out against the clear blue sky like
the jagged edges of some rude fortifications. Below the forest,
where stood fishermen’s houses and the summer cottages of Halifax
citizens among gray fields, a shadow had fallen, but a golden glow
yet lingered on the frozen Arm and along the eastern shore where
Pinewood was situated.
Mrs. Colonibel’s glance wandered aimlessly to and fro, from a few
belated crows that had been to the seashore to look for fish, and
with hoarse and contented croaks were sailing to their haunts in the
old pine trees at the head of the Arm, to the small boys who seemed
loth to leave the ice.
“Those lads have it all to themselves,” she said spiritlessly.
“Yes,” muttered Valentine; “magnificent ice too.”
“Val,” suddenly, “why couldn’t we have a skating party this
evening? I know Miss Delavigne would like it, for she won’t go to the
rink now.”
His eyes glittered, but he said nothing.
 “There’s been steady frost for a week,” she went on earnestly; “it’s
perfectly safe, and the evening bids fair to be lovely. What do you
say? is there a moon?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have a bonfire anyway, and tea at the cottage.”
“All right,” he said.
“Then come to the telephone with me, and let us decide whom to
ask. There’s nothing going on, and everybody will come.”
Mrs. Colonibel felt better. With considerable energy, after a
sufficient number of guests had been invited, she, seconded by
Valentine, who began to show some interest in the matter, made
arrangements for the evening and then went to the dining room.
An unusual air of animation pervaded the table when Armour
came in and found Valentine carving in his stead. He glanced about
inquiringly while his brother was surrendering his seat.
“We‘re going to have a small skating party, Stanton,” said Judy.
“There’s no harm in that, if it is Lent, and everybody is tired of the
rink. Will you come?”
“I am sorry to say that I have to return to the office.”
Vivienne’s face clouded slightly, and his glance rested on her in
almost idolatrous affection. “You wish to go, do you not?” he said.
“What a question!” snapped Judy. “You know she’s an enthusiastic
skater, and you sha‘n’t deprive her of it, Stanton. Besides, I’m going
to venture on the ice this evening. You know I don’t skate in the
rink.”
“Very well,” he said; “Vivienne shall do as she chooses. Perhaps I
may get out before your party breaks up. What have you been doing
this afternoon, Judy?”
Between the intervals of satisfying the demands of a wonderfully
good appetite, Judy gave him a humorous description of some hours
spent at the Pavilion, and set everybody laughing at her account of
the mingled ingenuousness and shrewdness with which Stargarde
dealt with some of her troublesome protégés.
Apparently they were a very happy family. Vivienne and Judy were
as lighthearted as two children; Armour’s coldness and sternness
were almost lost in the grave happiness that had seemed to
envelope him since his engagement to Vivienne; Mrs. Colonibel’s
private worries had for some time kept her from afflicting the
household with outbursts of impatience; and Valentine for once lost
his sullen and reserved demeanor, and the two angry red spots that
had so frequently showed themselves in his cheeks died away.
The dinner was somewhat hurried, and at its close the different
members of the family scattered in various directions, all with some
commission from Mrs. Colonibel to execute, except Armour, who
went immediately to the library after requesting that the Micmac
should be sent up to him.
With a noiseless, catlike tread the Indian, a few minutes later,
knocked at the library door and after waiting for Mr. Armour’s “Come
in,” advanced slowly into the room, and stared at his master with
lazy, observant eyes, his hands hanging straight by his sides.
“You are prompt, Joe,” said the gentleman; “you were not off to
your wigwam?”
A fiction politely kept up in the family for Joe’s gratification was
that he every evening crossed the Arm to his solitary camp in the
woods, when as a matter of fact he, on cold nights, occupied a snug
and warm retreat at the cottage.
“Too early,” said he sententiously. “Go later, when moon shinum.”
“Mrs. Colonibel is going to have a skating party to-night,” said Mr.
Armour.
“Yes; me busy,” said Joe.
“Are you; I am glad to hear it. I sent for you to ask that you give
some assistance in preparing for it.”
“Mr. Valentine askum,” said Joe. Then he added with a gurgle in
his throat resembling a laugh, “He likeum bear in trap now.”
Armour’s face darkened, then as quickly lightened again at a
deliberate proceeding on the part of the Indian, whose eyes during a
slow voyage of discovery about the room revealed to him a
photograph of Vivienne on the mantelpiece at the sight of which he
crossed himself devoutly.
“Why do you do that, Joe?”
“She likum Wirgin Mary.”
“I’m afraid your ideas of religion are rather mixed, Joe.”
 “She likum Wirgin,” repeated the man.
“Do you really think so?” said Armour softly.
“Um,” and the Indian grunted half-contemptuously. “Me likum
Wirgin girl when you cold like fish. Joe watch her always. She say,
‘Joe, in wigwam you freezum; you go some warm place; me pay.’
Joe say no, then Wirgin girl makeum this,” and throwing open his
coat he displayed a bright vest of fine red cloth embroidered with
gold, by the presentation of which Vivienne had won his heart
forever, for she had gratified his savage fondness for gay colors, a
fondness strictly repressed in his dependence on Colonel Armour for
cast-off garments of sober, gentlemanly hues.
Armour’s face flushed in deep gratification. He was also much
interested in the curious fact that the Indian should display ten times
more attachment to Vivienne, whom he had only known for a few
months, than he ever had to Stargarde, who had been a devoted
friend to him for years. Probably Stargarde, with her leveling
doctrine of the brotherhood of all men, did not appeal to his semi-
civilized nature as did Vivienne, with her aristocratic habit of treating
dependents kindly, and yet rather as if they belonged to a different
order of beings from herself.
“You marryum soon?” said Joe, who, in spite of his press of work,
was in an unusually loquacious mood.
“Not for a good while, Joe—four whole months.”
A sound of guttural disapproval issued from Joe’s throat. Then
with a sardonic smile he inwardly reflected: “Cunnel wishum Miss
Debbiline marry Mr. Val; Joe’s heart say, ‘No, Cunnel, Miss Debbiline
likeum Mr. Stanton.’ Joe guessum Mr. Stanton know.”
Mr. Stanton did know. There was a look of white, suppressed rage
on his face. Strange to say his thoughts had gone in the same
direction as Joe’s. He was at that moment reflecting for the
thousandth time on the bitterness of the unnatural struggle that he
had carried on with an unnatural parent for so many years.
“You not feelum bad,” said Joe consolingly, as he observed his
emotion. “Me watchum like dog, always.”
Armour instantly recovered himself and turned his despairing eyes
from the photograph. “That is all, Joe. You may go now.”
 The Micmac buttoned his coat over the sacred scarlet vest. “You
never loseum, Mr. Stanton. Me watchum. Mr. Val get out of trap—
sore paw heal—he snarl, but not much hurt. Ging,” and with this
invariable parting salutation, he glided from the room.
With a face as devoid of expression as one of the blocks of wood
that he was cutting, Joe laid the foundation of a substantial bonfire
on a gravel walk close to the frozen shore of the Arm. A number of
garden seats he placed near by, and a few small tables. Then
walking along the path, he surveyed the jagged cakes of ice
shouldering each other up the bank, and selecting the clearest place,
chopped a cutting to lay a plank walk to the smooth ice. This done,
he examined the sky where a pale and sickly moon was reluctantly
climbing above the trees, a hazy cloud hanging on her skirt.
“No wind—crows much chatter this sundown—big snow ‘fore
morning,” muttered Joe; then he sauntered to the cottage to see
that the fires were burning brightly and watched the house-servants
who were bringing down china and eatables in covered baskets, and
large kettles for heating tea, coffee, and soup.
An hour later the snapping, crackling bonfire sent up a cheerful
blaze that brightly illumined the frozen declivity, the walls of the little
cottage against the evergreens, and the sheet of bluish-white ice
spreading itself out under the pale rays of the moon. Groups of
guests came hurrying down in detachments from the house,
laughing and exclaiming at the pleasures of an impromptu skating
party, and Joe, standing a little aside, watched them. To his Indian
mind, the obsequious manner in which the gentlemen of a party
always served and ministered in every possible way to their
“squaws,” was the most remarkable thing in the social intercourse of
white people.
“Makeum no good,” he soliloquized, surveying a little lady’s
delicate foot extended for a skate that Valentine was putting on with
an empressement as great as if kneeling at her feet were the most
supreme happiness that could be bestowed upon him.
Though talking and laughing with the little lady, Valentine kept
one eye on the path to the house, and Joe knew that he was
watching for Vivienne, who had not yet appeared. Presently she
came lightly over the gravel, Judy hanging on her arm.
Valentine had just finished his task and springing up was about to
offer his services to Vivienne, when Joe strolled out from the trees.
“Me puttum skates on, Miss Debbiline?” he said inquiringly.
“Yes, Joe,” and she seated herself a little apart from the others.
“Here, Val,” said Judy mischievously, taking the seat that had just
been vacated. “I’m very fidgety about my boots. If you don’t get
them on right you’ll have to unlace them again.”
Joe had never done such a thing before as to put on a lady’s
boots, and it was a great honor for Vivienne that he should offer to
do so. If it had been the simple clasping of a pair of spring skates
his task would have been more simple, but Vivienne, in common
with many Canadian skaters, wore steel blades that were screwed to
the soles of a pair of boots.
Joe took off the little slippers in which she had run down from the
house, carefully fitted her boots, right and left, then proceeded to
grapple with the long laces which he reflected would be sufficient to
fasten on two pairs of moccasins. Carefully he drew the black strings
in and out till his task was done, when he drew his hand over the
smooth firm leather that fitted over the ankles so neatly, and had
some kind of a conceit pass through his mind similar to that of the
classic Mercury with winged heels.
Vivienne rose, thanked him, and walked over the planks down to
the edge of the ice where Judy was waiting for her.
“Joe, Joe,” exclaimed the latter looking back at him, “bring some
chairs out on the ice and get that one with runners. Mrs. Macartney
will be here later on.”
“La voilà,” said Vivienne, as a loud, jovial voice was heard in the
distance, and presently Captain Macartney and Patrick were lifting
their caps to the two girls, while Mrs. Macartney roamed to and fro,
looking apprehensively at the heaped-up ice floes, and the plank
walk to which she was by no means inclined to trust herself.
“It’s like the man that ran away with Lord Ullin’s daughter,” she
vociferated in her jolly way. “He couldn’t get across—that is, the
father couldn’t—and he said, ‘My daughter, oh, my daughter.’”
 Vivienne came swiftly back, and seized both her hands. “Dear Mrs.
Macartney, I am so glad to see you.”
“And sorry that we came,” said Patrick, pretending to cry. “Come
away, Geoffrey.”
“Naughty boy,” and Vivienne shook her head at him, then with
Captain Macartney and Judy busied herself in getting Mrs. Macartney
out on the ice and into the chair with runners, on which the lady sat
for the remainder of the evening, being pushed hither and thither by
any man who felt the spirit moving him to do so.
Camperdown arriving half an hour later, stood high up on the bank
struck by the strange beauty of the scene. The moon, as if still
uncertain of herself, shone with rays more pale and more tremulous,
and shed a weird and peculiar light over the dark hills and the white
breast of the Arm. There was a strange hush in the air, and not a
breath of wind, and it was hardly freezing. Assuredly a storm was
brewing and a thaw coming on.
Immediately below him the bonfires and torches stuck in the
ground threw a broad, bold glare of light for some distance out on
the ice, and the skaters for the most part were keeping pretty well in
the bright space, and away from the semi-darkness of the regions
beyond, where a few adventurous boys were madly careering. Their
frolicsome shouts and exclamations Camperdown could hear but
confusedly in the velvety softness of the air, but beneath him he
could distinctly distinguish Patrick Macartney’s voice.
“Dr. Camperdown, my mother begs to inquire whether she has
your gracious permission to partake of a cup of tea.”
“Three-quarters only, a whole cup later on,” said Camperdown,
who, by means of rigid dieting had so reduced the weight of his
patient that she had made a vow never to leave Nova Scotia.
“Camperdown, Camperdown,” called some one who espied him on
the bank, “make haste; we want one for a set of sixteen lancers.”
Thus appealed to, he quickly put on his skates, passing on his way
to the place where he was in demand, a little group consisting of
Judy, Patrick, and Vivienne, who was giving them instructions in the
art of skating.
 Valentine skated swiftly up to them as he went by. “You are
victimizing yourself,” he heard him say in a low voice to Vivienne,
“Come with me for a spin.”
He saw the girl hesitate, but Valentine laughed, peremptorily
seized her hand, and away they went toward the mouth of the Arm
like two birds that had taken wing.
Vivienne was not pleased. Valentine’s action had been abrupt,
almost rude, and it annoyed her to be treated with so much
unceremoniousness. And yet in her heart there was such a profound
and sorrowful compassion for the young man whose unhappy state
of mind she realized only too fully, that it kept her from any outward
display of resentment.
He was laughing and talking somewhat wildly, and there was a
reckless gleam in his eye that made her avoid meeting his glance.
They were both excellent skaters, swift and graceful of foot; and
for a few minutes Vivienne had a kind of painful enjoyment in the
rapid rushing through the air, but at last she said gently: “Had we
not better return?”
“Not yet!” he exclaimed, and his grasp of her fingers tightened.
The girl had one of her quick, unerring intuitions. Valentine had
fallen into one of his rash humors, in which he was a slave to the
impulse of the moment. Without sufficient hardihood to plan a
deliberate misdeed, scarcely a day passed without his falling
heedlessly into one.
The eastern bank of the Arm that they were close to seemed to be
rushing by them like the dim and hazy outline of some huge beast
tearing along in the opposite direction from that in which they were
going. The light and noise of the skating party were far behind
them. Away in front was the smooth, black ice, dark and
treacherous, that they would soon be on. Then beyond the ice,
where it grew thinner and thinner, was the icy, open water.
“Valentine,” she said calmly, “what are you doing?” and she again
strove to draw her hand from his.
He laughed wildly, made a sudden turn, and was skating
backward, his desperate eyes looking into hers, his left hand
outstretched to seize her right. He would make sure of her other
hand in order that she might not escape him.
She saw the mocking, reckless devil looking out of his eyes, and
the hot, French blood rose in her veins. She held back her hand from
him; dangling from it was a stout leather strap by which she had
been pulling Judy about. At the end of the strap was a buckle.
“Coward!” she exclaimed in bitter contempt, and swinging the
strap in her hand, she struck him on the forehead.
The sudden shock, the sting of the metal, and the blood that
trickled down his face confused him. He threw both hands to his
head, staggered, and fell backward. Vivienne stood looking at him,
and as he groped blindly for his pocket, skated to him and dropped a
handkerchief between his fingers.
With a low cry of rage like that of a wounded beast, he sprang to
his feet, stretched out his hands, felt himself pulled from behind, and
again fell to the ice.
He was a sorry spectacle as he lay raving and swearing there.
“You better go, Miss Debbiline,” said Joe, who in a pair of long racing
skates had appeared just as he was needed. “I takeum care him.”
Vivienne turned and went slowly up the Arm. “Where is my strap?”
asked Judy when she rejoined her. “I want you to drag me about a
little more, if you are not tired.”
“I threw it away,” said Vivienne. “Here is my necktie,” and she
drew a voluminous tie from the bosom of her short skating jacket.
“Why, it is dripping wet,” exclaimed Judy.
“I am very warm,” said Vivienne with a faint smile. “Give it to me,
Judy.”
“But, Vivienne, it looks as if you had been in the water.”
“I assure you I have not. Give me the tie. Now take my hand.”
At ten o’clock, when servants were running to and fro from the
cottage to the ice, and the skating party was refreshing itself with
various meats and drinks, an acquaintance of Mrs. Colonibel
suddenly lifted up her voice:
“There comes Mr. Armour, running down the bank like a boy.”
He was in great good humor, and saluted her with the utmost
cheerfulness. “Yes, Mrs. Fairlee, I did think I was going to miss this;
and I haven’t been on the ice this winter. Will you have a turn with
me?” and standing beside her, first on one leg and then on the other,
he fastened his skates to the heavy soles of his boots with two
decisive clicks.
“No, I won’t skate with you,” she said, rolling her eyes at him over
her coffee cup. “I don’t believe there’s a woman here cruel enough
to do such a thing—is there, ladies?” and she took in the party with
a mischievous, inclusive glance.
“No, no—no cruelty here—don’t know what it is, but we won’t
persecute Mr. Armour,” and similar laughing ejaculations were heard.
“I want to see Major Heathcote on a matter of the last
importance,” she continued loudly; “does any one know where he is,
and will you, Mr. Armour, find him for me?”
“I will,” he replied, simultaneously with a voice announcing that
Major Heathcote was explaining something to Miss Delavigne.
“Ocular demonstration, probably,” said Mrs. Fairlee. “Off you go to
find them, Mr. Armour; here’s a currant bun for refreshment,”
slipping it from her saucer to his pocket.
He smiled at her—she never could tease him—and turning his face
toward the north he skated from her with long, powerful strides. Not
twenty paces distant he met the two people whom he was in search
of.
“No, we have not been to Melville Island,” said Major Heathcote,
stopping short. “Would you have cared to go, Miss Delavigne?”
“I did not think of it, thank you.”
“Perhaps you would like to skate in that direction with Mr.
Armour?”
Miss Delavigne did care to do so, after a deliberate survey of Mr.
Armour’s face, and Major Heathcote went smilingly in search of his
wife and refreshments.
Through the faltering moonlight they skated, rapidly skirting the
dusky shore where one comfortable residence succeeded another;
all standing in grounds trending down to the inlet of the sea.
Keeping close to the trees, they struck across to the opposite side,
where on tiny Melville Island is perched the house of the keeper of
the prison, dominating the prison itself, a long, low red building
situated close to the Arm on the shores of a tiny cove.
This cove Armour skated slowly around, holding Vivienne by the
hand and confiding to her reminiscences of boyish days hoarded for
many years in his own breast. She listened with great attentiveness,
understanding well, in the quiet intensity of her love for him, what a
relief it was for his over-burdened mind to have at last found one
being in the world to whom its secrets could be partly confided. That
she did not have his whole confidence she knew well, but she was
willing to bide her time.
At last he stopped, and looked searchingly at her. “Tu as les yeux
fatigués,” he murmured in the French that it was such a pleasure to
her to hear him speak, and he guided her to a fallen tree that lay
near the old prison. They sat down on it and he again scanned her
face.
“You are quiet and pale,” he said uneasily. “Is there anything the
matter with you?”
“Not now,” she said softly. “What is this round thing that you have
in your pocket? Ah, a bun,” and taking it out she began to eat it,
offering him an occasional currant.
Armour sat beside her laughing and talking happily, and at
intervals lapsing into the serious by a discussion of the history of the
prison, among whose captives had been some American officers
taken in the war of 1812.
Vivienne listened silently but appreciatively to him till a low sob of
wind and a few flying snowflakes warned her that they must hasten
home.
Armour’s high spirits suddenly left him. “Vivienne, I hate to return
to that house,” he said. “I wish I could take you and turn my back
on it forever. Would you be willing to leave Nova Scotia? Would you
like to live in France?” and he put his arm around her as he skated
slowly beside her.
“For what reason, Stanton?”
“I am sick to death of Halifax, and do you know, darling, that I
have, without consulting you, found out that the old Lacy d’Entreville
château is for sale? Will you go and live there with me by that
French river that you love so much?”
Vivienne stopped skating, and looked up in surprise at him. They
were in the midst of a deathly solitude. Not a creature was near, not
a sound was heard, now that the swift striking of their skates
against the ice had ceased.
“Stanton,” she said dreamily, “I told you about Orléans, then later
on of the other place still dearer to me for my mother’s sake, of the
strange mass of buildings heaped up beside the Loire, and the little
village crouching below. Perhaps I said too much of my pleasure
when I beheld those walls, and saw the tapestried chambers of my
ancestors, and the great tower with its sloping ascent, where a
carriage and pair could start from the town and drive up into the
château——”
“Vivienne,” gently, “it was not any grandeur in your picture that
touched me. It was the homeliness of it; the comfort of Madame la
Princess’ apartments, the loneliness of the servants, the care they
were giving even to the dogs of their absent mistress, the interest of
the villagers in you——”
“Yes,” said Vivienne, “when we went into the lodge of the
concierge, the dogs of the princess occupied all the comfortable
chairs in the room, and the old man and woman sat on the stone
window ledge. Ah, those white hounds! They were charming,
Stanton, and they licked my hands.”
“The princess will sell the château, reasonably too,” said Armour
kissing Vivienne’s abstracted face. “You will go, sweetheart? We can
live in Paris for half the year.”
“Stanton,” said the girl with startling emphasis, “did I tell you that
it was like home to me?”
“No, my child, but I guessed that it might easily become so.”
“Never, never! France is beautiful, but this is my home,” gazing
about her. “This Canada, that France so basely deserted. The English
conquered us, protected us, and now the British flag is mine. We are
Canadians, Stanton, you and I; do not talk of France, and yet—and
yet,” losing her enthusiasm and speaking with a sweet and feminine
softness, “if it is for your good I will go to a desert with you.”
 He opened his mouth to reply to her, but she laid a finger across
his lips. “Stanton,” eagerly, “are you sure you would be happy to
leave here? You have great cares, great worries; but reflect—you are
no longer a boy. Can you tear yourself from your native land, and
become happy in another where you know no one? I think perhaps
you might even long for some of the old anxieties. Are you sure that
you would not regret the change?”
“I am sure of nothing except that I love you,” he said
passionately; “and I will not do anything that you do not approve of.”
“Then you will at once cease embracing me,” she said, and darted
away from him.
He soon caught up to her, and folding her fingers securely within
his, went flying before the north wind over the ice and arrived at the
Pinewood bank to find the skating party a dream. Every trace of it
had vanished—even the smoking embers of the bonfire had been
carried away. On coming nearer they found one solitary seat that
had been left, and on it Vivienne’s slippers laid conspicuously by her
cloak.
“Stanton, I wish to do something for Joe,” she said.
“Well, darling, what shall it be?”
“Will you always keep him, Stanton? He is a watchful servant.”
“We will keep him,” with gentle emphasis. “And now do you think
you can do without an escort up the bank? I wish to see Joe about
something at the cottage before he curls up for the night.”
“It looks dark up there,” said Vivienne wistfully.
“Oh, sweet story-teller!” said Mr. Armour with a low, happy laugh.
“You fear nothing on earth, and you cannot play Desdemona, so do
not try. You don’t wish me to see Joe,” and catching her up in his
arms he hurried up the gentle acclivity, bending his face teasingly
down to hers.
“If I ask you what Joe has been doing and why you are so
subdued this evening, shall I hear another pretty prevarication?” he
inquired, putting her down at the veranda steps.
“No,” she said gravely, and as he stood beside her in the now
rapidly falling snow, she mentally ran over her painful experience of
the evening. Should she shock Armour with an account of the
treachery of his wayward brother? No, a thousand times no.
“I am disturbed about something,” she said at last deliberately,
“but I do not care to talk about it.”
“Will you tell me to-morrow?” he asked eagerly.
“No, nor the next day, nor any day,” she replied. “I beg that you
will not make a mystery of it. Some one has offended me—and been
forgiven. After to-night I shall put the matter out of my thoughts.”
Armour’s face grew dark as he listened to her. “Perhaps it is as
well not to tell me,” he muttered: “I should not forgive so easily.”
 CHAPTER XXX
LOVE WILL BUILD HIS LILY WALLS

Late in the afternoon of St. Patrick’s Day, Camperdown, in a smart

new buggy that he had bought to please Zilla, but with
Polypharmacy—whom he had refused to give up—harnessed to it,
was driving along Barrington Street, that runs in a wavering line
through the town and out into the country.
Since early morning there had been several kinds of weather—as
is usually the case in Halifax on the seventeenth of March. The
parade and demonstration in honor of the saint had been held in a
driving snow-storm. Then followed brilliant sunshine and a high wind
that rattled the masses of wires suspended over the streets, and
tossed to and fro the banks of dead white snow heaped in billowy
ridges against the black and muddy earth.
When Camperdown set out, another change had taken place. The
wind had died away, and reluctant snowflakes were beginning to fall
from dark, smoke-colored clouds that were slowly rolling in over the
harbor.
The walking was slushy and disagreeable. Pedestrians in rubber
footgear passed along the sidewalks, looking in the shop windows,
where pots of pseudo shamrock were freely displayed, or entering
stores and offices to transact business in the leisurely, unhurried
fashion peculiar to the inhabitants of the city by the sea. Every
Irishman wore a large tuft of green in his hat or his buttonhole, and
many horses showed the nationality of their masters by proudly
shaking their heads, whereon was the emerald rosette.
A crowd of boys on a street corner, rapturously engaged in
watching one of their number, who was rubbing green powder on
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