Vivienne witnessed Stargarde’s emotion with a kind of awe, and by a gentle glance essayed to comfort her. The woman smiled through her tears, held up her golden head bravely, like a child that has accomplished its season of mourning and is willing to be cheerful, and said steadily: “I rarely discuss Flora—it is too painful a subject—but you are gentle and good; I wish to enlist your sympathies in her favor. You understand?”
“I will try to like her,” said Vivienne with great simplicity, “for your sake.”
“Dear child,” murmured Stargarde, “to do something for others is the way to forget one’s own trouble.”
Vivienne assented to this remark by a smile, and Stargarde fixing her eyes on the fire fell into a brown study. After a time she turned her head with one of her swift, graceful movements, and reading Vivienne’s thoughts with a readiness that rather disconcerted her, said: “You wish to know something about me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said the girl frankly.
“Good, as Dr. Camperdown says,” replied Stargarde. “I will tell you all that I can. First, I spent the first twelve years of my life as the eldest daughter of a poor parson and his wife. What do you think of that?”
“It is easy to imagine that your descent might be clerical,” said Vivienne innocently.
Stargarde laughed at this with such suppressed amusement that Vivienne knew she must have some arrière pensée. “They were not my real parents,” said her new friend at last.
“Indeed,” said Vivienne, measuring her with a glance so pitying that Stargarde hastened to say, “What does it matter? They loved me better I think for being a waif. The Lord knows all about it, so it is all right. You want to know who my parents are, don’t you?”
“Yes; but do not tell me unless you care to do so.”
“I can’t tell you, child,” said Stargarde, gently pinching her cheek. “I will not say that I do not know; I will simply say that I prefer not to tell anything I may know. Would it make any difference to you if I were to tell you that my father had been—well, say a public executioner?”
“I do not know; I cannot tell,” said Vivienne in bewilderment. “I could never imagine that you would spring from such a source as that.”
“Suppose I did; you would not punish the child for the father’s dreadful calling, would you?”
“Most persons would.”
“Yes, they would,” said Stargarde. “We punish the children for the sins of the fathers, and we are always pointing our fingers at our neighbors and saying, ‘I am better than thou,’ as regards lineage. And yet, in the beginning we were all alike.
‘When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?’”
“That was years ago,” said Vivienne in amusement; “blood trickling through the veins of generations has become blue.”
“My dear, we go up and down. The aristocrats of to-day are the paupers of to-morrow, except in rare instances. I do not think any the more of you for a possible existence in your veins of a diluted drop of the blood royal of France. I can understand your sentiment in regard to it, if you say, ‘I must never commit a mean action because I come of a line of distinguished ancestry’; though I think a better sentiment is, ‘Here I stand as noble in the sight of God as any creature of earth; I owe it to him and to myself to keep my record clean.’”
An alarming suspicion crept into Vivienne’s mind. “Are you an anarchist?” she asked anxiously.
“Oh, no, no,” laughed Stargarde; “a socialist if you will, in the broad sense of the term, a Christian socialist; but an anarchist never.”
“Are you a loyal subject to the Queen?”
Stargarde bent her beautiful head. “I am, God bless her! Not loyalty alone do I give her, but tender love and reverence. May all her descendants rule as wisely as she has done.”
Stargarde when she spoke used as many gestures as Vivienne herself. Then she was brimful of personal magnetism, catching her hearers by the electric brilliance of her bright blue eyes and holding them by the pure and silvery tones of her voice. Vivienne felt her blood stir in her veins as she listened to her. She was loth to have her visitor go, and as she saw her glance at the clock she said hurriedly, “We have wandered from the subject of your up-bringing.”
“Come and see me in my rooms,” said Stargarde rising, “and I will tell you all about myself and how I went to live with the Camperdowns when I was twelve. They are all gone now but Brian,” and she sighed. “How I miss them! Family life is such an exquisite thing. You, poor child, know little of it as yet. Some day you will marry and have a home of your own. You have a lover now, little girl, haven’t you?” and she tilted back Vivienne’s head and looked searchingly into her eyes.
“Yes,” said Vivienne gently.
Stargarde smiled. “Before he takes you away I wish you would come and stay with me for a long time. Now I must fly, I have an appointment at six.”
“Good-bye, Miss Turner,” murmured Vivienne, as her caller took her by the hand.
“Good-bye, Stargarde,” corrected her friend.
“Stargarde—it is a beautiful name,” said the girl.
“It is a great worry to people; they ask me why I was so named, and I never can tell them. I only know that it is German, and is occasionally used in Russia.”
“Are you going? are you going?” called Judy, limping briskly from the other end of the room. “Wait a minute. I want to show you some clothes that I will give you for your poor children.”
“I haven’t time, I fear.”
“I will send you home in a sleigh,” said Mr. Armour, strolling toward them.
“Oh, in that case I can give you a few minutes,” said Stargarde.
“This is what we might call a case of love at first sight, isn’t it?” said Judy, fluttering like a kindly disposed blackbird between Vivienne and Stargarde.
Stargarde laughed merrily as she went into the bedroom.
Vivienne was left behind with Mr. Armour. Ever since her interview in the library with him he had regarded her with some friendliness and with decided curiosity. Now he asked with interest,
“Did you ever see any one like Miss Turner?”
“No,” said Vivienne warmly, “never; she is so devoted, so enthusiastic; her protégés must love her.”
“They do,” he said dryly.
“It is not my way to plunge into sudden intimacies,” said Vivienne with a little proud movement of her neck; “yet with Miss Turner I fancy all rules are set aside.”
“She is certainly unconventional,” said Mr. Armour.
“I wish I were like that,” said Vivienne. “I wish that I had it in me to live for others.”
“You have a different mission in life,” he said. “You are cut out for a leader in society rather than a religious or philanthropic enthusiast. By the way, Macartney wants your marriage to take place as soon as possible. Of course you concur in his opinion.”
“Yes,” said Vivienne absently, “I will agree to anything that he arranges. As I told you the other day,” she went on with some embarrassment, “I think it is advisable for me to leave here as soon as possible. However, I spoke too abruptly to you. I have been wishing for an opportunity to tell you so.”
“Have you?”