"About what?"

"About Dick. Austin, he's madly in love with Viviette too."

Austin stared at her for a moment incredulously. "Dick in love--in love
with Viviette?" Then he broke into a peal of laughter. "My _dear_
Katherine! Why, it's absurd! It's preposterous! It's too funny."

"But seriously, Austin."

"But seriously," he said, with laughing eyes, "such an idea has never
penetrated into old Dick's wooden skull. You dear women are always
making up romance. He and Viviette are on the same old fairy and great
brown bear terms that they have been ever since they first met. She
makes him dance on his hind legs--he wants to hug her--she hits him over
the nose--and he growls."

"I warn you," said Katherine. "Great brown bears in love are dangerous."

"But he isn't in love," he argued light-heartedly. "If he were he would
want to stay with Viviette. But he's eating his heart out, apparently,
to leave us all and go and plough fields and herd cattle abroad. The
life he lives here, my good mother's somewhat arbitrary ways, and one
thing and another have at last got on his nerves. I wonder now how the
dear old chap has stood it so long. That's what is wrong with him, not
blighted affection."

"I can only tell you what I know," said Katherine. "If you won't believe
me, it's not my fault. Keep your eyes open and you will see."