Singularly enough, during those days no word of love was spoken between Tollemache and Yvonne. The mine was laid, and the smallest spark would fire it; but the spark was not forthcoming, and for the excellent reason that Lorry wished Mrs. Carmac and her millions far away before he asked Yvonne to marry him. If, in some distant time, the girl's mother insisted on enriching her, it would be difficult to defeat her intent. But it was Yvonne he wanted, not Mrs. Carmac's money. He was more attached to Ingersoll than to his own father, a narrow-minded Philistine who had cut himself adrift from a son because the ingrate preferred art to money spinning.
If once he and Yvonne were wed, Mrs. Carmac's ambitious schemes in behalf of her beautiful "niece" would go by the board. Circumstances had made it impossible that father and mother should meet, even at their daughter's wedding—and where could such a marriage take place but in Pont Aven, and who should spread the wedding feast but Mère Pitou?
So Lorry bided his time; though Yvonne read him like a book, and the knowledge that her mother's continued residence in the village alone prevented Lorry from taking her in a bearlike grip and telling her that she was the one woman he had ever loved, or ever would love, gave active reinforcement to her anxiety concerning her father, whose well-being, she was convinced, depended on the prompt and complete restoration of life to its normal plane.
Thus, when preparations were being made by Mère Pitou for the Réveillon—that cheerful feast which enlivens the midnight of Christmas—Yvonne did not hesitate to tell her mother that on that occasion at least they would see little of each other, and perhaps less in the immediate future, as she was going with her father to Concarneau.
Mrs. Carmac took the hint gracefully. As a preliminary she sent Captain Popple and Jackson to England; the one to become a sort of factotum in her Surrey house, the other to join the staff in her Charles Street residence.
"Ask your father, as a last concession, to allow you to travel with me as far as St. Malo when I leave on the twenty-sixth," she said. "It will be a long and weary journey otherwise. Have you a friend who can accompany you? You would need to stay one night in St. Malo and return here next day."
Ingersoll did not demur. It was arranged that Barbe should go with Yvonne; so one heart, at least, rejoiced, since the mere prospect of such an outing brought untold joy to a little maid who regarded St. Malo as a place so unutterably remote that it figured in her mind only as a geographical expression somewhat akin to Timbuktu and the North Cape of Lapland.
Yvonne left her mother about four o'clock on Christmas Eve. Tollemache was waiting for her, and together they strolled to the cottage. There was much to be done, because Mère Pitou expected a large party. Peridot, though specially invited, had refused to come. Indeed, his manner was so gruff that Barbe, who acted as messenger, was moved to tears while relating the reception accorded her.
"Tcha!" snorted her mother. "That's a man's way, all over. When a woman gives him the slip he'll sulk and paw the ground like an angry bull for a week or so. Then he'll drown his sorrows in cognac, and at the next Pardon you'll see him squaring up to some pretty girl as if the other one had never existed. What about that sardine boat which the American lady promised him? That should widen his mouth when it reaches the quay."