“Ah! Madame! There is the Press. There are the snobs.... In fine....”
“I suppose if he had money?” Audrey murmured.
“Ah! Madame! In Paris, if one has money, one has everything. Paris—it is not London, where to succeed one must be truly successful. But he is a player very highly accomplished. It is miraculous that he should have played so long in a café—Dauphin told me the history.”
Musa appeared, and after him Madame Piriac. More appeals, more reproaches, more asseverations that friends who left so early as one o’clock in the morning were not friends—and the host at length consented to open the door. At that very instant the bell clanged. Another guest had arrived.
When, after the long descent of the stairs (which, however, unlike the stairs of the Rue Delambre, were lighted), Audrey saw seven automobiles in the street, she veered again towards the possibility that the Foas might after all be influential. Musa and Mr. Gilman, the yachtsman, had left with the women. Audrey told Miss Ingate to drive Musa home. She said not a word to him about her departure the next afternoon, and he made no reference to it. As the most imposing automobile moved splendidly away, Mr. Gilman held open the door of Madame Piriac’s vehicle.
Mr. Gilman sat down opposite to the women. In the enclosed space the rumour of his heavy breathing was noticeable. Madame Piriac began to speak in English—her own English—with a unique accent that Audrey at once loved.
“You commence soon the yachting, my oncle?” said she, and turning to Audrey: “Mistair Gilman is no oncle to me. But he is a great friend of my husband. I call always him oncle. Do not I, oncle? Mistair Gilman lives only for the yachting. Every year in May we lose him, till September.”
“Really!” said Audrey.
Her heart was apprehensively beating. She even suspected for an instant that both of them knew who she was, and that Mr. Gilman, before she had addressed him in the drawing-room, had already related to Madame Piriac the episode of Mozewater. Then she said to herself that the idea was absurd; and lastly, repeating within her breast that she didn’t care, she became desperately bold.
“I should love to buy a yacht,” she said, after a pause. “We used to live far inland and I know nothing of the sea; in fact I scarcely saw it till I crossed the Channel, but I have always dreamed about it.”