“No.” She took a step farther away from Laure who stood looking down at her, clear and quiet, with that incredulous lift to her brows. “Don’t pretend any more, please; it makes me rather sick. I know about everything, you see.”
“That is very exactly what I do not do, ma petite. No, André, do not go—you, too, will wait and see. What is this nonsense, Fair?”
“You needn’t keep it up any longer, I tell you,” returned Fair fiercely. “I’ve found out what you and Monsieur de Lautrec have been doing. I thought that you loved me, Laure—you did it pretty well—and all the time you were nothing but fortune hunters, were you?”
“You told Philippe—that?” asked Laure. Every atom of colour had drained out of her face, but she did not lift her voice. “No, wait, André. I am not yet through. It would be a good hunter who could find your fortune, Fairfax. You have none to hunt for.”
“I have two million dollars,” said Fair.
“You have not half a million centimes. It was all in cotton, that great fortune; it is gone. Your lawyers had cabled to you while you were ill in Germany, but the doctors they said you must not hear that bad news then; they asked me to tell you, gently, when you were much better. So I have waited, and Philippe, he has cabled three—no, four times, to see whether skill and thought and work might not save that so mighty fortune. To-day he thought perhaps that we might have heard——”
“Oh,” said Fair in a small, childish voice. “Oh.” She put her hand to her head; it hurt dreadfully. “Well, then, I can go to work——” She made a vague gesture, as though if she stretched out her hand work would be there for her to cling to—and Laure smiled, a fine, cruel little smile. Something snapped in Fair’s head. “That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it, Laure? But you see, I’m not over six feet tall, I’m not stronger than steel—I’m not busy twelve hours a day sitting around in the sun being an ex-hero—so I’m going to work.”
“Did you, perhaps, tell my brother that you thought that of him, too?” asked Laure.
“I told him that, and I told him more,” said Fair.
Laure came toward her, something so terrible in her white face that for a moment Fair thought that she was going to kill her.