Mademoiselle looked from one to the other, a curious expression on her face.
"He is a remarkable man, this 'Olgate?" she asked.
"He is—pardon, Mademoiselle—the devil," said Barraclough.
She laughed her fluting laughter. "Oh, but the devil may be perhaps converted," she said. "He may be tamed. You say music have powers to tame the savage breast." She tapped her bosom dramatically, and smiled. "There is many men that may be tamed."
She cast a soft glance at Barraclough and then at me.
But I only got the edge of it, for at that moment I caught sight of a gray face, with little tufts of whisker under the ears, and glancing glasses that hung over the railings of the music balcony above. It was Pye. Had he been there long in the darkness or had he only just arrived, attracted by the light and the voices? The latter seemed the more probable assumption, for as I looked up he made an awkward movement as if he was embarrassed at being discovered. Yet if he had been eavesdropping, where was the harm? But somehow I felt annoyed. The others followed my glance, but the clerk had gone.
Mademoiselle Trebizond sighed and put her small hand over her mouth to hide a yawn.
"It is so what you call dull, Sir John," she protested in her coquettish way. "Nothing but sea, sea, and not even the chance to go on deck. I would sooner have the mutineers. Oh, but it was insensate to leave Europe and France. No, it is a country the most diabolic this side of the ocean. What is there under the sea, Sir John?"
"Why, the fishes, Mademoiselle," said he, grinning.
"No, no; understand me, Monsieur. I mean under the ground. What is there?" She waved her hands. "Sea, sea, sea, nothing else, and savages," she added thoughtfully.