The young officer took on a very discreet air. "You are, perhaps, in need of an agent de la correspondance over there again?"
La Vireville smiled. "Of that—and more," he said. "God knows I have little enough to offer her—probably she won't even look at me—but I should be glad to know that I had your consent to address your sister."
"M. le Chevalier," retorted Henri du Coudrais, "do you suppose that I have forgotten last April? I have not met any man to whom I would sooner commit my sister. As for Raymonde—but she must speak for herself."
"You are very kind, du Coudrais," said La Vireville, but he sighed. "I wish I could think your sister would be as easily pleased. . . . It is only right to point out to you that I have neither money, nor prospects, nor a home, nor even two arms, to offer her——"
"But you asserted just now that one was sufficient," observed Henri du Coudrais, leaning back with a smile against the rail that ran out to the beacon light. "As for fortune or prospects, which of us émigrés has those nowadays? And upon my soul, I don't know a woman on earth who is less set on either than Raymonde."
"I suppose that I ought not to ask if there is any other man?"
"There was the Duc de Pontferrand; she refused him last October—just at the time, Monsieur Augustin, when she was making inquiries about you in London from the old gentleman whose name I cannot remember, who lives with a little boy in Cavendish Square."
"I know she did that, God bless her!" said La Vireville. "I did not, of course, know about the Duc." He fell silent, fingering the rail and still gazing out to sea. It occurred to du Coudrais that though he had the look of one who has weathered a long and trying illness, he yet seemed in some indefinable way a younger man.
"Why should I not hire a boat and sail over to Sark?" asked La Vireville suddenly. "My wooing must in any case be rough and ready. I could be back before the Cormorant sails, if I went at once."
"Ma foi, an excellent idea!" said Raymonde's brother heartily. "That is, of course, the solution. I will procure you a boat, if you wish. You must be sure to take a native with you, even though the distance be not great, for sailing hereabouts is dangerous, if only on account of the hidden rocks—'stones,' as they call them." He looked about him. "There is Tom Le Pelley; he would serve your purpose."