Four days after Churchill took his departure from Quebec and its Maple Leaf, Brock came striding into the dining-room, his head erect, his gray eyes shining.
“Miss Howard, you are going for a walk, this afternoon,” he said, as he drew back his chair.
“How do you know?”
“Because I am counting on you. Have you anything else to do?”
“I was going to the library,” she suggested. “The new magazines are just in.”
“Let them wait,” he said coolly. “It is too fine a day to be wasted over a fire and a book. I’ll not only show you a new picture; but I promise to tell you a better story than any that ever was written into a magazine.”
Nancy looked up into his happy eyes.
“Then the week is over?” she questioned.
“At last.”
She laughed at his accent of relief.
“How impatient you were! Your secret must have preyed upon you.”
“Not so bad as that,” he began; but she interrupted him mockingly.
“And how many people have you been telling, in the meantime?”
“Not one.”
“Truthfully?”
“Yes. I wanted to tell you, first of all.”
She smiled back at him fearlessly.
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“And will you go?”
“Of course,” she answered heartily. “Did a woman ever refuse to listen to a secret?”
An hour later, she joined him in the hall. Brock stared at her approvingly. Her dark green cloth gown was the work of a tailor of sorts; the plumes of her wide hat made an admirable setting for her halo of ruddy hair. And Nancy returned the approval in full measure. Few men were better to look upon than was Reginald Brock, tall and supple, his well-set head thatched with crisp brown hair and lighted with those merry, clear gray eyes. No sinister thought had ever left its line on Brock’s honest, manly face.
“Come, then,” he said, as he opened the door. “You are in my hands, this afternoon.”
He led the way to the Lower Town. Then, leaving Notre Dame des Victoires far behind them, they passed the custom house, crossed to the Louise Embankment and, rounding the angle by the immigration sheds, came out on the end of the Commissioners’ Wharf.
“There!” Brock said triumphantly. “What do you think of this?”
Nancy drew a long breath of sheer delight.
“One can’t think; one can only feel,” she said slowly.
The river, lying deep blue in the yellow sunlight, slid past their very feet, its glittering wavelets crossed and recrossed with silvery reflections caught from the sky above. Far down its course, the dark indigo Laurentides seemed jutting out into the stream that washed their feet. Above was the Citadel, a crown of gray upon its purplish cliff. Behind them, the noise of the city lost itself in the murmur of the hurrying tide. Close at hand, a network of cables was lowering freight into the hold of an ocean-going steamer; and, out in the middle of the stream, a clumsy craft, loaded to the water’s edge, crawled sluggishly upward against current and tide, ready for the morrow’s market.
Brock pointed to an unused anchor, close to the edge of the embankment.
“Shall we sit down?” he asked.
Nancy took her place in silence. Silently he dropped down beside her. It was a long time before the stillness was broken, save by the lapping of the river at their feet and the hoarse cries of the men in the steamer’s hold. For the moment, they were as isolated as if they had been in some remote desert, rather than upon the edge of one of the busiest spots of the entire city.
Brock’s impatience appeared to have left him. With his gaze on the river, he was whistling almost inaudibly to himself; but it was plain to Nancy, as she watched him, that his thoughts were altogether pleasant ones. So were her own, for the matter of that. The past month had been a happy one to her, and Brock had caused some of its happiest memories. She had trusted him completely, and she had never known him to fail her. His chivalry, his courtesy, his brother-like care had been for her, from the hour of their meeting. She could still recall the glad look in his eyes, as they had rested upon her when he entered ............