Ingersoll rose, and caught the younger man's hand in an impulsive grip. "Lorry," he said, "if it pleases Providence to ordain that Yvonne shall marry you, I'll offer thanks on my knees. You are honest as the sun, and transparent as the Aven beneath the trees of the Bois d'Amour in summer. I have known your story for years. I had hardly learned your name before a man told me of the quarrel with your father because you refused to fall in with some marriage brokerage arranged between him and the father of a girl whose business interests marched with his. I knew too that you bought ten of my pictures during the first six months of our acquaintance. I didn't interfere with your well meaning subterfuge. You have lost nothing on that speculation, at any rate, because you acquired my work at its best period, and your investment would yield two hundred per cent. if you sold now.
"But let that pass. Do you believe I would ever have encouraged you to waste your time in pursuing the fickle goddess of art but for the knowledge that you were happy, and content, and far removed from the temptations that beset youngsters of means but of no occupation? No, you know well that I should have driven you forth with hard words. Yet I have never deceived you. How often have I said that Art is a cruel mistress, a wanton who refuses her favors to some most ardent wooers, yet flings them with prodigal hands at others who, though worthy of her utmost passion, despise it? But you have a quality that ranks you far above the painter who, while fitted to see divine things, wallows in the mud of mediocrity. You are a loyal friend and good comrade, a man of clean soul and single thought.
"Would to Heaven I might leave you now to deal with this prying hound, Raymond! But the plan you suggest is useless. He would laugh at you, disregard your threats, and taunt you with personal designs on Mrs. Carmac's millions. You have forgotten, Lorry, that Yvonne is her daughter. I know my wife's nature to the depths. She has drunk to nausea of the nectar of wealth. What has it given her? Happiness? Good health? A contented mind? No; she is scourged with scorpions, torn by a thousand regrets. She would give all her money now if some magician would wipe out from her life the record of the last eighteen years. Very gladly, very humbly, would she dwell in this cottage, provided that no cloud existed between her and Yvonne. But that cannot be. As offering a middle way, I have agreed that Yvonne shall visit her at intervals, and even that small concession has delighted her beyond measure. And what will be the outcome? No matter what I may say, she will try to capture my girl's heart with a shower of gold.
"No; I don't believe for one moment that she will ever estrange Yvonne from me. I do not even commit the injustice of attributing any such design to her. But that Yvonne will inherit Carmac's millions if they are left undisturbed in her mother's possession is almost as certain as death,—the one certainty life holds for us poor mortals. And, above all, don't hug the delusion that the man who has discovered my wife's pitiful secret is not alive to this phase of a problem which is in my mind night and day to the exclusion of all else. He will exact a price which you cannot pay. Each hour his ambitions mount higher. That unhappy woman is as powerless as a fawn caught in the coils of a python."
"One can free the fawn by dislocating the python's vertebræ. Is there any harm in my trying?"
"You may not kill the man. If you tackle him openly, you admit the very contention that he may never be able to establish in a court of law; because, although he may have ferreted out the prior marriage, he cannot yet be sure that there the divorce may not hold good. Even I myself am doubtful in that respect. It is a difficult legal point. Obviously Stella fears something. The fact that she has retained Raymond when she meant to dismiss him seems to indicate a weak spot in her armor. No, Lorry. I've looked at this thing from every point of view, and I see no loophole of escape. She is trapped, and Raymond alone can set her free. We must await his pleasure, act when he acts, and strive to assist her when the crisis arrives. Meanwhile, for her sake, we must endeavor to tolerate him."
Tollemache sat down again. "I feel like my namesake, Saint Lawrence the Martyr," he said gloomily. "You remember that when he was put on a gridiron, and done to a crisp golden brown on one side, he suggested that by way of a change his executioners should grill him a little on the other. Gee whizz! That reminds me, Socrates—if Sainte Barbe can't arrange matters better for pilgrims to her shrine, she ought to go out of the business. Here are Madeleine, Yvonne, you, and myself mixed up in fifty-seven varieties of trouble! And I suppose Mère Pitou and little Barbe will receive attention in turn. If ever I meet Sainte Barbe in Kingdom Come, I'll tell her her real name. It strikes me that whoever invented the pin-dropping scheme knew what he was doing."
Ingersoll needed no explanation of his friend's outburst against the gentle lady whose love story has descended through the centuries. It was a confession of sheer impotence. He was forcing himself to admit that he could no more stay the course of events than stem the next tide rushing in from the Atlantic.
Feeling that he wanted to bite something, Tollemache lit his pipe and clenched the stem viciously between his strong teeth. Aroused by the striking of the match, Ingersoll began to smoke too. The attitude of the two bespoke their sense of utter helplessness. Thus might men imprisoned on some volcanic island sit and await in dumb misery the next upheaval of the trembling earth.