“We were looking at the plans,” added Denise, hurriedly. “I have agreed to sell Perucca to Colonel Gilbert—as you have always wished me to do.”
“Yes; I have always wished you do it,” returned Mademoiselle Brun, slowly. She was very cool and collected, and in that had the advantage over her companions. “Has the colonel the money in his pocket?” she asked with a dry smile. “Is it to be settled this afternoon?”
She glanced from one to the other. If love is blind, he certainly tampers with the sight of those who have had dealings with him. Denise was only thinking of Perucca. She had not perceived that Colonel Gilbert was honestly in love with her. But Mademoiselle Brun saw it. She was wondering—if this thing had come to Gilbert twenty years earlier—what manner of man it might have made of him. It was a good love. Mademoiselle saw that quite clearly. For a dishonest man may at any moment be tripped up by an honest passion. Which is one of those practical jokes of Fate that break men's hearts.
“You know as well as I do,” said Colonel Gilbert, with more earnestness than he had ever shown, “that the sooner you and mademoiselle are out of the island the better.”
“Bah!” laughed mademoiselle. “With you at Bastia to watch over us, mon colonel! Besides, we Peruccas are invincible just now. Have we not burnt down the Château de Vasselot?”
Gilbert winced. Mademoiselle wondered why.
“I want it settled as soon as possible,” put in Denise, turning to the papers. “There is no need of delay.”
“None,” acquiesced mademoiselle. She wanted to sell Perucca and be done with it, and with the island. She was a woman of iron nerve, but the gloom and loneliness of Corsica had not left her at ease. There was a haunting air of disaster that seemed to brood over the whole land, with its miles and miles of untenanted mountains, its malarial plains, and deserted sea-board. “None,” she repeated. “But such transactions are not to be carried through, in a woman's drawing-room, by two women and a soldier.”
She looked from one to the other. She did not know why one wanted to buy and the other to sell. She only knew that her own inclination was to give them every assistance, and to give it even against her better judgment. It could only be, after all, the question of a little more or a little less profit, and she, who had never had any money, knew that the possession of it never makes a woman one whit the happier.
“Then,” said the colonel with his easy laugh—for he was inimitable in the graceful art of yielding—“Then, let us appoint a day to sign the necessary agreements in the office of the notary at Bastia. I tell you frankly I want to get you out of the island.”