Des Louvres understood the silent struggle better, perhaps, than Alistair himself. He also knew the way to end it.
“You are not taking any champagne,” said the tempter, refilling his glass for him.
Mechanically, weakly, Alistair lifted the glass to his lips, and drained it. As he set it down again a flush overspread his face, and he cried out thickly:
“Why not? I’ll tackle old Mendes with pleasure. He’s not a bad sort; he would like to oblige me, I know.”
An hour later the Frenchman and his servant were helping Lord Alistair Stuart into a cab, to the driver of which the Count gave the necessary directions, while the sober Prince looked on with a face of regretful dismay.
CHAPTER XII
THE POWERS THAT BE
When Alistair woke up on the morning after his promise to Don Juan, he did not feel happy.
Apart from the headache left by his overnight excess, he suffered from the recollection of the pledge extorted from him. He owed nothing whatever to Mendes, and yet it put a strain upon his sense of honour to ask a favour of the Brazilian.
Mendes and he had been friendly for a long time, without being friends. Their acquaintance had begun and continued, so to speak, along two parallel lines. Molly Finucane had brought them together. And Molly Finucane kept them apart.
Molly had known the financier longer than she had known Alistair Stuart. When she gave way to that touch of real sentiment which united her to Stuart, Mendes had shown no resentment and made no unpleasant scenes. Perhaps it was partly for that reason, out of a kind of mild remorse, that Molly had continued to receive him as a friend, and even to encourage his visits; although with the new sense of honour which had been developed in her by her passion for Stuart, the little woman steadily refused to accept the smallest gift from the millionaire. Perhaps, also, she saw that the presence of Mendes, seated at their dinner-table day after day, bland, reserved, and calmly expectant, like a player whose turn to play has not yet come, acted as a talisman on Alistair, who was made to see that another was waiting to snatch the prize from him if he once loosened his grasp.