“Yes—but I cannot offer it to you. It is in my right-hand pocket, and my right arm is disabled.”
“An arm and a leg, eh?” said the man, seeking in the pocket indicated by Lory, for the neat silver cigarette-case, which he handled with a sort of grand air—this gentleman of the mountain side. “You will smoke also?”
And with his own brown fingers he was kind enough to place a cigarette between de Vasselot's lips. The tobacco-smoke seemed to make him feel still more at home with the head of his clan. For he sat down again and began the conversation in quite a familiar way.
“Who is this Colonel Gilbert of Bastia, who mixes himself up in affairs?” he inquired.
“What affairs, my friend?”
“Well, the affairs of others, it would appear. We hear strange stories in the macquis—and things that one would never expect to reach the mountains. They say that Colonel Gilbert busies himself in stirring up the Peruccas and the de Vasselots against each other—an affair that has slept these thirty years.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, and you should know it, you who are the chief of the de Vasselots, and have this woman to deal with; the women are always the worst. The château, they say, was burnt down, and the women disappeared from the Casa Perucca in the same week. The Casa Perucca is empty now, and the Château de Vasselot is gone—at Olmeta they are bored enough, I can tell you.”
“They have nothing to quarrel about,” suggested Lory.
“Nothing,” replied the Corsican, quite gravely.