"Let me hear how you put it," she went on mercilessly.
"We would be making a compact to our mutual advantage," he said. "I would gain a beautiful and accomplished wife; you would inherit your mother's millions. We would unite in protecting her and punishing Rupert Fosdyke."
"I see," she said, with an air of careful consideration. "You do not want an answer tonight, I suppose?"
"Time is pressing—horribly pressing."
"In that respect time must stand still until tomorrow. We shall meet then."
She went off without any attempt at bidding him farewell. Raymond glared after her fixedly. He was annoyed, almost discomfited, but not disheartened. He had taken the step that counts. She knew now what lay at the back of his projects, and that was a long stride toward the goal. He was so deeply absorbed in reckoning the pros and cons of every word Yvonne had spoken that he failed to see Tollemache standing outside Julia's until close on him. Even then he could not find his tongue; so he merely grinned. Thus might a fiend gloat over a soul in peril. Was there none to help? Raymond, at any rate, saw a clear road. He was most affable to the porter who was waiting to assist him in undressing. For a man with a broken arm he had struck a shrewd blow in Pont Aven that night.
CHAPTER XIII
SHOWING HOW TOLLEMACHE TOOK CHARGE
Yvonne found her father hunched up in his accustomed chair. He was smoking, and brooding, his gaze centered in the pine logs crackling on the hearth. Thus had she found him each night since his return from Concarneau. He, seldom without a book after daylight failed unless some crony called in for a chat, had not opened a book during many days. He had the aspect of a man crushed by misery. It was borne in on his daughter that he was slowly yielding under an intolerable strain; yet it had become her bitter portion to add materially to a load carried so uncomplainingly.
He looked up as she entered, and essayed a welcoming smile which conveyed a ghostly reminiscence of a joyous past now utterly remote. It cut her to the quick; but she strove to emulate his seeming nonchalance.
"I thought my message would have brought you sooner," he said. "But perhaps you were helping your mother to overhaul her boxes. Mère Pitou gave me the news of the salvage, which has surprised our local experts. This is the first time in the memory of man that Les Verrés have disgorged their prey."