"Please spare me any references of that sort," broke in Yvonne. She could endure much; but she was not compelled to suffer this hypocritical scoundrel's blasphemy.
Raymond started. There was a new quality in her voice. She was regaining her self control, and at all costs he must prevent that. If he would win, he must adopt tactics of the whirlwind order.
"Forgive me," he said. "The thought has been so constantly in my mind of late that it came unbidden. But you leave me no choice. I must speak plainly, almost brutally. Let Rupert Fosdyke obtain the faintest shadow of the unquestionable facts, and he will not only drive your mother forth a pauper, but put such a complexion on the facts that she will be disgraced forever among her equals."
"Disgraced! Why? People are not disgraced because they obtain a divorce according to the laws of their own country."
"No; but they are punished severely if they offend against the social code. Mrs. Carmac's offense is against British law. She cannot deny it. The first person who lodges an information can upset her husband's will. Deprived of his money and its influence, what becomes of her?"
Yvonne stood in the road as though she had been turned to stone, and perforce Raymond halted and faced her. There was not a strong light in that place. Some fifty yards away shone a lamp that marked a footbridge across the top of the harbor. Just beneath the Aven took its last plunge as a mountain stream and mingled its sweet waters with the tides. On the rocks, high above the river, a Calvary was silhouetted against the cold, clear blue of a starlit sky, and it needed no highly imaginative mind to picture the stark figure of the Christ gazing down compassionately on one of His creatures who was disobeying His ordinances.
Not far distant was the cheerful café frequented by artists and writers on summer evenings, where Madame Maréchale, Julia Guillou's sister, dispensed cups of black coffee, and tiny glasses of liqueur cider, and epigrams—each excellent in their way. In a flash the notion presented itself to Yvonne's overburdened mind that the pleasant intimacy of those mild revels was being banned by some malign influence which had its living agent in the diminutive creature now confronting her. The empty right sleeve of Raymond's overcoat added to his lop-sided appearance. The black figure, sharply outlined against the white road and the luminous mist rising from the river, was almost ghoul-like in its ungainliness. She could see the Calvary. Raymond had turned his back on it. Instantly she found in him the personification of the impenitent thief.
But she had her wits about her now. Life was becoming too complex in its issues that a girl should handle them alone. No matter what the outcome, her father must take control; but before going to him she must probe this miscreant's full intent.
"Do you imply that you are the person who may lodge an information?" she said, with a calmness of tone that sounded bizarre in her own ears.