“Now what are you thinking?”

“That one of these days you'll fall in love, and it'll change all that.”

“Maybe.” But she sounded both unconvinced and unconcerned. The dance ended and Armand escorted her back to her friends.

But something strange had happened between them during the weeks of her debut. When Armand saw her again, he looked at her differently than he had before. She seemed more womanly to him all of a sudden, and it didn't really make sense to him. But the rest of the girls at the parties had all been so girlish, such children. In comparison, Liane was so much more grown-up, so much more poised. He felt suddenly awkward with her, less comfortable than he had before. He had taken her for granted for a long time, assumed somehow that she was just a very charming child. But on her twentieth birthday she looked more mature than ever, in a mauve moiré gown that turned her hair to spun gold and turned her eyes to violet as she smiled at him.

Her birthday came just before the summer, and Armand was almost relieved when she went to Lake Tahoe for the summer months. She was no longer helping him at the Consulate, he was on his feet now, and he didn't want to take advantage of her. He saw Liane only when her father gave a dinner party, which was still very rare. And by sheer force of will Armand managed to stay away from Lake Tahoe until the end of the summer, when Harrison absolutely insisted that he come up for the Labor Day weekend, and when he saw her, he sensed instantly what Harrison had known for so long. He was deeply and passionately in love with the girl he had known since she was scarcely more than a child. It had been a year and a half since Odile died, and although he still missed her terribly, his thoughts were now invaded constantly by Liane. He found himself staring at her all through the weekend, and when they danced on a warm summer night, he led her back to the table quickly, as though he could not bear to be that close to her without pulling her deeper into his arms. And oblivious of what he felt, she cavorted near him on the beach, her long, sensuous limbs cast across a deck chair on the sand. She rattled on as she had in years past, and told him funny stories, and she was more enchanting than ever, but as the weekend drew to a close, she began to sense his mood and his eyes upon her, and she grew quieter, as though being drawn slowly into the same spell.

When they all returned to town, and Liane to college, Armand fought himself for several weeks and then finally, unable to bear it any longer, he called her and berated himself afterward for doing so. He had just called to say hello and see how she was, but she sounded strangely subdued when he called her, and he worried instantly that something might be wrong. Nothing was, she assured him in gentle tones, but she was feeling something she didn't quite understand and wasn't sure how to handle. She felt guilty toward Odile, and unable to talk to her father about the confusing emotions she felt. She was falling in love with Armand as desperately as he was falling in love with her. He was forty-five years old and she was not yet twenty-one, he was the widower of a woman she had loved and respected deeply, and she still remembered her parting words: “Take care of Armand for me … Liane … he will need you …” But he didn't need her that much anymore, and surely Odile had never meant for Liane to take care of him like that.

What ensued was an agonizing three months. Liane could barely keep her mind on her studies, and Armand thought he would go mad at his desk. They met again at a Christmas party given by her father, and by New Year's both of them had given up the fight. He took her to dinner one night, and afterward, in an agony of tension and emotion, he told her all that he was feeling, and was stunned when her emotions cascaded out with the same force as his. They began seeing each other weekly, on weekends, and kept to quiet haunts so as not to become the center of gossip around town, and at last Liane told her father, expecting some resistance, and possibly even fury, but what she got from him instead was delight and relief.

“I wondered when you two would finally realize what I've known for two years.” He sat looking at her, beaming, as she stared.

“You knew? But how could you? I didn't … we didn't …”

“I'm just smarter than both of you, that's all.” But he approved of the way they had proceeded. They had each felt out their emotions with caution and respect for the past. He knew that neither of them took the matter lightly, and he wasn't even bothered by the difference in their ages. Liane was an unusual young woman, and he couldn't imagine her happy with a man her own age. And to her, the twenty-four-year span between them mattered not at all, although Armand had expressed some concern about it in the beginning. Now he didn't give a care to something so minor as that. He adored her. He felt as though he had been born again, and he rapidly proposed marriage. On her twenty-first birthday they announced their engagement. Her father gave a lovely party, and life tasted like a dream, until two weeks later, when Armand received word that his term in San Francisco had come to an end. He was being moved on to Vienna as Ambassador. And like it or not, it was time to go. He and Liane discussed a precipitous marriage, but her father intervened. He wanted her to complete her final year in college, which meant waiting another full year until they could be married. Liane was crushed, but she was anxious not to disobey her father, and the two lovers agreed that they would survive the next year somehow, with visits when they could, and letters each day in between.

It was a difficult year for them both, but they managed, and on the fourteenth of June 1929, Armand de Villiers and Liane Crockett were married at old St. Mary's in San Francisco. Armand had left Vienna a month, for the “wedding of the year,” as the San Francisco papers called it, and they both went back to Europe for a quick honeymoon in Venice, before returning to Vienna, where Liane would then be Ambassadress. And she stepped into those shoes with extraordinary ease. Armand tried to make everything easy for her, but she scarcely needed his help. After her years with her father, and the six months of helping Armand after Odile's death, she knew what to do.

Her father came to visit twice during their first six months there, unable to stay away. He had no business in Europe, but he longed for his daughter, and during his second visit she could no longer keep the news from him, although she had predicted accurately to Armand how he would react. She was having a baby the following summer, and her father responded with sheer terror, insisting privately to Armand that she had to be brought back to the States, had to have the best doctors, had to stay in bed, had to … He was haunted by memories of Liane's mother, and his agony when he had lost her. He was almost in tears when he went back to the States. And Liane had to write him daily to assure him that all was well. In May he arrived six weeks before the baby was due, and he almost drove them crazy with his worry, but Liane didn't have the heart to send him back to the States. When she went into labor, it was all Armand could do to subdue Harrison and to keep him busy, but fortunately the baby came quickly, a fat, angelic-looking girl with wisps of blond hair and round cheeks and a little rosebud mouth, born at 5:45 P.M. in a hospital in Vienna. When Harrison came to visit Liane three hours later, he found her eating dinner and laughing, as though she had spent the afternoon at the opera with her friends. He couldn't believe it, nor could Armand, who gazed at his wife as though she had wrought single-handedly the miracle of all time. He loved her more than life itself, and thanked God for this new life he had never even dreamed would be his. He was totally crazy about the baby, and when their second daughter was born two years later in London, he was just as excited all over again. This time they had convinced Liane's father that he could wait in San Francisco and that they would cable him the moment the baby was born, which they did. Their first child they had named Marie-Ange Odile de Villiers, which they had both thought about with great seriousness before doing. They both decided that it was what they wanted, and they knew that Odile would have been pleased. The second baby was named Elisabeth Liane Crockett de Villiers, which pleased Liane's father no end.

He came to London for the christening, and gazed at the baby with such rapture that Liane teased him afterward about it, but she also noticed on this trip that he didn't look well. He was sixty-eight years old, and had always been in good health, but he seemed older than his years now, and Liane was worried when she saw him off on the ship. She said something to Armand about it, but he had his hands full with a difficult diplomatic negotiation with the Austrians and the English, and afterward he felt guilty for not paying more attention. Harrison Crockett died of a heart attack on the ship on the way home.

Liane flew home to San Francisco without the children, and as she stood beside her father's casket she felt a loss she almost couldn't bear, and she knew that life would never be quite the same without him. Her Uncle George was already preparing to move into Harrison's house, and his shoes at Crockett Shipping, but her uncle was like a very dim star in the orbit of the bright planet that had been her father. She was glad that she didn't live in San Francisco and wouldn't have to see her uncle living in their house. She couldn't have borne watching the gruff, ornery old bachelor living her father's life and changing all the old ways. She left San Francisco within a week, with a feeling of grief that exceeded only what she had felt when Odile had died, and she was grateful to return home to Armand, to her babies, and to throw herself back into her life as Ambassadress at his side. From that moment on she always felt less of an allegiance to her own country. Her tie to the States had been her father, and now all of that was gone. She had the fortune her father had left her, but she would have much preferred to have her father living, and all that mattered to her now were her daughters and her husband and her life with them.