"When you go to England and become a great Lord," said she, "you will forget poor Marie."
"Yes," agreed Willie, as one stating the most unchallengeable of truths. Marie Lambert frowned. It was not the reply for which she had angled.
A few more days had passed. Every afternoon, when released from attendance upon Madame Gilbert, the French girl would climb up to an appointed place on the hillside above the camp and there meet Willatopy. They were, she judged, safe from observation. Madame, when not afloat on the sea, stuck to the sea shore, or read books in the shady entrance to her tent. Never gratuitously active on foot, Madame rarely ascended the hill which formed the backbone of Tops Island. She was enjoying a spell of real physical laziness after her unremitting labours in the war.
The bright blue eyes and dark brown skin of Willatopy seemed to the depraved taste of Marie to be the most fascinating masculine combination in colour that she had ever enjoyed; when to them was added the glamour of Willie's succession to an historic peerage, Marie felt that for once in her lurid career she really loved. Willie, she assured him, occupied the whole of her capacious heart. There was no room, no room at all, for junior deck and engine-room officers. Marie knew her mistress. She was well aware that a threat from Madame was no vain play with words. She was convinced that the discovery of her intrigue with Willatopy would mean: first, confinement in the ever-rolling yacht at anchor—a nauseating prospect—and finally, her return to France with Madame as an accuser and relentless enemy. Yet she risked all to sport with Willatopy in the woods.
"That is unkind," said she. "You do not love Marie any more." Willatopy, who was lying at her feet, raised his face lazily. He permitted her, if she pleased, to bend over and kiss him. She did bend over, though conscious of some slight humiliation.
"What do you want?" asked Willatopy, rather crossly. "I have left my brown girls for you. When I was in Thursday Island, I would not look at them. I rejected one whom I used to love, and she wept bitterly. When I offered her a white man, John Clifford, she smacked his face. None of the brown girls would put up with John. All scorned him. He is a filthy little beast. For you, Marie, my white woman, I have turned my back on the brown girls. What more do you want?"
"I do not wish that you should go to England and leave me. If you go, Madame Gilbert will take me away."
"I have told you many times that I do not go to England."
"But you are a lord, the Lord of Topsham."
"I can be a Lord here on my Tops Island."