“Why wouldn’t it have done? I should think that it’s just what would have done.”
“Let her slip away penniless, and—and without friends?”
“She’d be no more penniless and without friends than she was when—when you—” she sought for the right word—“when you picked her up.”
“No, of course not; only now the—the situation is different.”
“I don’t see that it is—much. Besides, if you were to let her run away first, so that you get—whatever the law wants you to get, you could see that she wasn’t penniless and without friends afterwards. Most likely that’s what she was expecting.”
His countenance fell. “I—I don’t think so.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t think so as long as she could bamboozle you. I was simply thinking of your getting what she probably wants to give you—for a price.”
“I don’t think you do her justice, Barbe. If you’d seen her––”
“Very well; I shall see her. But seeing her won’t make any difference in my opinion.”