“In the Château de Vasselot.”
There was a dead silence for a moment, broken at length by a movement on the part of Mademoiselle Brun. In her abrupt way she struck herself on the forehead as a fool.
“Yes,” testified Susini, brusquely, “that is where he has been.”
Denise remembered ever afterwards, that Lory did not look at her at this moment of his complete justification. It was now, and only for a moment, that Colonel Gilbert lost his steady imperturbability. From the time that Lory de Vasselot entered the room he had known that he had inevitably failed. From that instant the only question in his mind had been that of how much his enemies knew. It could not be chance that brought de Vasselot, and the Abbé Susini, and Mademoiselle Brun together to meet him at that time. He had been out-manoeuvred by some one of the three, and he shrewdly suspected by whom. There was nothing to do but face it—and he faced it with a calm audacity. He simply ignored mademoiselle's blinking glance. He met de Vasselot's quick eyes without fear, and smiled coolly in the abbé's fiery face. But when Denise turned and looked at him with direct and honest eyes, his own wavered, and for a brief instant he saw himself as Denise saw him—the bitterest moment of his life. The esteem of the many is nothing compared to the esteem of one.
In a moment he recovered himself and turned towards Lory with his lazy smile.
“Even to a romance there must be some motive,” he said. “One naturally wonders why your father should allow his enemy to keep possession of a house and estate which were not his, and why he himself should remain concealed in the Château de Vasselot.”
“That is the affair of my father. There was that between him and Mattei Perucca, which neither you nor I, monsieur, have any business to investigate. There are the title-deeds. You have a certain right to look at them. You are therefore at liberty to satisfy yourself that you cannot buy the Perucca estate from Mademoiselle Lange, because it does not belong to Mademoiselle Lange, and never has belonged to her! A fact of which you may have been aware.”
“You seem to know much.”
“I know more than you suspect,” answered de Vasselot. “I know, for instance, your reason for desiring to buy land on the western slope of Monte Torre.”
“Ah?”