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Updated: June 14, 2025
We can afford it." So it was evident that he, too, had realised the danger of their happiness hers and his if Miss Vallincourt remained at Stockleigh any longer. He did not come in till late in the evening, when June was sitting in the lamplight, adding delicate stitchery to some tiny garments upon which she was at work.
Amid the glacial atmosphere of disapproval into which marriage had thrust her, Diane found her only solace in Virginie, a devoted French servant who had formerly been her nurse, and who literally worshipped the ground she walked on. Conversely, Virginie's attitude towards Miss Vallincourt was one of frank hostility.
Having no children of her own, she lavished a pent-up wealth of affection upon Magda of which few would have thought her capable, and though she was by no means niggardly in her blame of Hugh Vallincourt for his method of shelving his responsibilities, she was grateful that his withdrawal into the monastic life had been the means of throwing Magda into her care.
He was the "Saint Michel" of her childhood days, the man with whom she had unconsciously compared those other men whom the passing years had brought into her life and always to their disadvantage. The first time she had seen him in the woods at Coverdale was the day when Hugh Vallincourt had beaten her; she had been smarting with the physical pain and humiliation of it.
He himself had inherited owing to the death of an elder brother in early childhood. But there was no younger brother to step into his own shoes, and failing an heir in the direct line of succession the title and entailed estate would of necessity go to Rupert Vallincourt, a cousin a gay and debonair young rake of much charm of manner and equal absence of virtue.
"Is that being dead?" she whispered, pointing to the room she had just quitted. Very gently he tried to explain things to her. Afterwards Magda overheard the family lawyer asking him in appropriately shocked tones of what complaint Lady Vallincourt had died, and there had been a curious grim twist to Lancaster's mouth as he made answer. "Heart," he said tersely. "Ah! Very sad.
"It is just what one might expect from the child of Hugh Vallincourt," she said thoughtfully. "It's the swing of the pendulum. There's always been that tendency in the Vallincourts the tendency towards atonement by some sort of violent self-immolation. They are invariably excessive either excessively bad like the present man, Rupert, or excessively devout like Hugh and Catherine!
"You see" the sensitive colour as usual coming and going quickly in her face "Miss Vallincourt is on a holiday." She turned and went quickly into the house, leaving Gillian conscious of a sudden uneasiness that queer "trouble ahead" feeling which descends upon us sometimes, without warning and without our being able to assign any very definite cause for it.
"You're not likely to enjoy a holiday in Devonshire." June, innocently unaware of any double entente in Magda's speech, glanced across at her in astonishment. "Oh, but why not, Miss Vallincourt? Devon is a lovely county; most people like it so much. But perhaps you don't care for the country, Mr. Mr. Davilof?" She stumbled a little over the foreign name.
She debated the question wildly in her mind, tempted to tell him, yet feeling that even if then he stayed with her it would not be because he loved her or had ceased to care for Miss Vallincourt, but only because he was impelled by a sense of duty. And her pride rebelled against holding him by that. His voice broke in upon her conflicting thoughts. "Yes. I'm going abroad.
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