“The train leaves in half an hour.”
“Then do not interrupt me.”
She turned away from him, and sat down. M. Roulleau, too glad to gain peace, waited patiently. For five minutes there was silence, broken by no sound but the heavy drip of rain; a distant rumble of carts; one or two church clocks striking the hour. Then madame lifted her head, and spoke in a measured, set voice, very different from her late vehement outbreak,—
“You will go to the station, and take a ticket for Pont-huine,” she said; “but you will get out at Maury, the village on this side of it. Make what inquiries you can about strangers at the Lion d’Or, and return by the last train. It is probable that M. Deshoulières will meet you at the station.”
“What then?” said the little man breathlessly. “You have seen nothing, heard nothing, done nothing. No one has appeared at the Lion d’Or. If you may venture an opinion, the whole affair is a silly hoax. Are you capable of this?”
“Every day implicates us more,” Roulleau said, wiping his face.
“There is no gain without speculation,” replied madame, with one of her scornful glances. “Would you prefer opening your arms to Monsieur Saint-Martin?”
“He will ask so many questions.”
“It is the more easy in such a case to shape your answers.”
Little Roulleau was helpless under her inexorable will. His own sordid nature prompted him one way, while his cowardice held him back. He would have been a villain without his wife, but he would have dug underground, putting out all his little crafty resources, to fence himself round from discovery. She worked more boldly and for larger ventures. The imprudences she committed kept him in continual alarm. At the same time there was a fertility of resource, a vigour in her undertakings, of which he acknowledged the value, and which were strong enough to carry him along against his judgment. He remonstrated, but he had never sufficient power to resist. She swept away all his little terrified suggestions like a whirlwind. Ignace put on his yellow straw hat, took his thread gloves and his umbrella, and went obediently to the station. Madame was more polite that day to Thérèse than she had been for months.