"Yes, madame, but why should you infer that my motive in looking into that room was interest in your affairs?"
"I do not altogether assume that, Mr. Frost," the lady protested. "I infer simply—but, pardon! you were to say—?"
"Merely to ask you, madame, what Captain Bonhomme proposes to do with me, should you not be so good as to use your influence in my behalf?"
For reply the lady shrugged her shoulders a trifle. "I have fear, monsieur," she said after a moment, "that Captain Bonhomme will take you for a sail, perhaps a long sail, on the Southern Cross."
"Then," said Dan, "since there is no doubt in my mind of your influence with the captain, I beg that you will have him release me."
"It is that that I desire, monsieur; and yet—?" Madame de la Fontaine paused and glanced at her companion with a charming little air of interrogation.
"And yet?" repeated Dan, flushing a little as he looked into the lovely blue eyes that met his so frankly.
"I confess, monsieur, I must first discover if you are really deserving of my efforts. I care to know very much why you watched me last night at the House on the Dunes. For what reason do you watch me at midnight? a stranger, a woman? Why is it that my affairs give you interest? I would know."
Her voice, her countenance expressed now only her sense of injury, an injury which, as it were, she was striving not to regard also as an insult. Under the persistent searching of her soft glance, Dan felt himself very small indeed.
"Answer me, if you please," she said. This time Dan detected just a trace of the sharpness with which she had dismissed the obsequious Jean. It gave him courage and a sense of protection from the fascination he knew that this strange woman was successfully exerting over him.