“No one can wait,” he was in the habit of saying, “better than I can.”
CHAPTER XXIV — THE LANE OF MANY TURNINGS
If John Turner expected Colville to bring Loo Barebone with him to the Rue Lafayette he was, in part, disappointed. Colville arrived in a hired carriage, of which the blinds were partially lowered.
The driver had been instructed to drive into the roomy court-yard of the house of which Turner’s office occupied the first floor. Carriages frequently waited there, by the side of a little fountain which splashed all day and all night into a circular basin.
Colville descended from the carriage and turned to speak to Loo, who was left sitting within it. Since the unfortunate night at the Hotel Gemosac, when they had been on the verge of a quarrel, a certain restraint had characterised their intercourse. Colville was shy of approaching the subject upon which they had differed. His easy laugh had not laughed away the grim fact that he had deceived Loo in such a manner that complicity was practically forced upon an innocent man.
Loo had not given his decision yet. He had waited a week, during which time Colville had not dared to ask him whether his mind was made up. There was a sort of recklessness in Loo’s manner which at once puzzled and alarmed his mentor. At times he was gay, as he always had been, and in the midst of his gaiety he would turn away with a gloomy face and go to his own room.
To press the question would be to precipitate a catastrophe. Dormer Colville decided to go on as if nothing had happened. It is a compromise with the inconveniences of untruth to which we must all resort at some crisis or another in life.
“I will not be long,” he assured Barebone, with a gay laugh. The prospect of handling one hundred thousand francs in notes was perhaps exhilarating; though the actual possession of great wealth would seem to be of the contrary tendency. There is a profound melancholy peculiar to the face of the millionaire. “I shall not be long; for he is a man of his word, and the money will be ready.”