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From some perverse and roguish impulse the girl chose to take no counsel in this game she had begun to play; but each woman knew that the other comprehended the situation perfectly. When Victorine came into the dining-room to serve Willan Blaycke's supper, she looked, to his eyes, prettier than ever. She wore the same white gown and black silk apron with crimson lace she had worn before.
"Good God!" said Willan Blaycke, under his breath, "what witchcraft is going on here? what girl's voice is that?" And he sprang again to his feet. The voice died slowly away; the singer was moving farther off, "Ah! woe for the bees, The flowers are dead; No summer is fair as the spring. Ah me, but the honey is thick in the comb; 'Tis a long time now since spring.
The river is high now, and it is a fair sight to see the white blossoms along the banks." Cunning Victorine! She had all sorts of motives in this proposition. She thought it would be well to show Willan Blaycke to Pierre.
Victorine called again impatiently; and the next minute she bounded down the stairway, crying, "Why dost thou terrify me so, thou bad Benoit, not answering me when I " She stopped, face to face with Willan Blaycke, and gave a cry of honest surprise. "Ah! but is it really thou?" she said, the rosy color mounting all over her face as she recollected how she was attired.
But this was what Willan Blaycke did, and it is as much a mystery now as it doubtless was then, why he did it, he married Jeanne Dubois, the daughter of a low-bred and evil-disposed Frenchman who kept a small inn on the Canadian frontier. Jeanne had a handsome but wicked face.
"Ah!" he said, "where have you been all this time? I have slept in a chair, and am vastly rested." "The Lord only knows where I have been," answered Willan, laughing. "I too have slept; but a woman with a voice like the voice of a wild bird has been singing strange melodies in my ear." The elder man smiled. "The dreams of young men," he said, "are wont to have the sound of women's voices in them."
So long as he knew that Jeanne was living in her fine house as Mistress Blaycke he had been content, in spite of Willan Blaycke's having sternly forbidden him ever to show his face there. But this last downfall was too much. Victor Dubois ground his teeth and swore many oaths over it.
Willan had lived in his father's house more as a guest than as a son. To the woman who was his father's wife, and sat at the head of his father's table, he bore himself with a distant courtesy, which was far more irritating to her coarse nature than open antagonism would have been.
Greenhow has published instances of this kind under the name of "vagabond's disease," a disease simulating morbus addisonii, and particularly found in tramps and vagrants. In aged people this condition is the pityriasis nigra of Willan. According to Crocker in two cases reported by Thibierge, the oral mucous membrane was also stained.
Why don't you let other people have a turn now, after all these years? There's Miss Barham, and Charlotte Corfield, and Mrs. Willan they'd all do a great deal more if you didn't do so much. I know that. Lucy's cool bright eye meant, indeed, that she had heard some remarks made of late with regard to Dora's position at St. Damian's somewhat unfavourable to her cousin.
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