Still Clyffurde remained irritatingly silent, and St. Genis asked him somewhat tartly:
"I trust I am making myself clear, Sir?"
"Perfectly, so far," replied the other quietly, "but I am afraid I don't quite see how you propose that I could serve Mlle. Crystal in all this."
"You can with one word, one generous action, Sir, put me in a position to claim Crystal as my wife, and give her that happiness which she craves for, and which is rightly her due."
A slight lifting of the eyebrows was Clyffurde's only comment.
"Mr. Clyffurde," now said Maurice, with the obvious firm resolve to end his own hesitancy at last, "you say yourself that by taking this money to His Majesty, or rather to his minister, you, individually, will get neither glory nor even gratitude—your name will not appear in the transaction at all. I am quoting your own words, remember. That is so, is it not?"
"It is so—certainly."
"But, Sir, if a Frenchman—a royalist—were able to render his King so signal a service, he would not only gain gratitude, but recognition and glory. . . . A man who was poor and obscure would at once become rich and distinguished. . . ."
"And in a position to marry the woman he loved," concluded Bobby, smiling.
Then as Maurice said nothing, but continued to regard him with glowing, anxious eyes, he added, smiling not altogether kindly this time,