"I feel like that, and you are a suitable object."
"Yet no man breathing could be better disposed toward you personally than myself."
"To blazes with you and your disposition!" was the amiable comment, and Fosdyke strode off into the gloom.
Raymond remained stock still until the tall, alert figure vanished round the bend where the houses surrounding the Place converge near the bridge. Then, with chin sunk into the collar of his coat, he went in the same direction.
Jackson was distinctly amused, even edified. "Well, I'm jiggered!" he chuckled. "If that ain't a nice, friendly w'y o' pawsing the time o' d'y—not 'arf! Real pire o' blighters, both of 'em!"
It was of course much later in the evening when Yvonne, a prey to deep tribulation of spirit, entered her mother's suite. Mother and daughter invariably kissed now at meeting and parting. On this occasion each was nervous and distrait; Yvonne because of foreboding on Madeleine's account, and Mrs. Carmac by force of that vague and obscure subconsciousness which lurks ever behind the operations of the everyday mind,—that dim ghost as inseparable from the acknowledged senses as the shadow from the material body, yet impalpable as a shadow, and not to be defined in terms of human speech.
All day long had this specter peered over her shoulder. Its influence was affrighting and oppressive. The woman who had regarded her conscience as dumb and deaf and blind during nearly twenty years had suddenly discovered that the gagged and bound prisoner had become a most imperious master. Was it conscience, she wondered, that caused this disease? But conscience is a monitor that recalls past transgressions and threatens punishment, while her inward vision was aware rather of gloomy portents akin to that state of being fay, which is the unenviable attribute of the Celt. A Breton would understand, and dread; but, as Tollemache put it, the fumes of petrol seem to have banished such wraiths from that outer world in which Mrs. Carmac moved and had her being.
Even Yvonne's presence did not banish the phantom. Singularly enough, she and her mother, each weighed down by premonition of evil, looked more alike than ever, and each interpreted the other's distress by the light of her own disturbed thoughts. Yvonne, accustomed all her life to unfettered frankness, took it that her mother was saddened by her prolonged absence.
"I'm sorry, Dear, I could not reach you earlier," she explained. "My father came back from Concarneau this morning, and he looked so overtaxed and worried that I resolved to take him for a long walk. He and I and Lorry—Mr. Tollemache, you know—went miles and miles. That is our cure for the blues,—an infallible recipe. We arrived home rather late, but feeling ever so much better."