"Why, Mother?"
"Because of the lies you told that gentleman. And that yarn about the rose at Nizon!"
"What business is it of his who Mademoiselle Yvonne's mother was, or where she lived, or when she died?"
"But everyone in Pont Aven knows that Monsieur Ingersoll came here from Paris with the little one. And we women have often said to one another it was strange that never a word was uttered about his wife, whether she was alive or dead."
"Then it is high time someone spoke of the lady, and I gave her an excellent character today. All I hope is that it suffices."
It did nearly suffice. But for the tongue of a garrulous woman, Harvey Raymond would have given his close attention to matters that he might rightly deem of more pressing and immediate interest; the salving of the Stella's belongings, for instance, which came to his knowledge almost accidentally.
The more he reflected on Peridot's scraps of history the more he was convinced that he had found a mare's nest, despite Mrs. Carmac's extraordinary outburst in the Hirondelle's cabin. Exhausted and pain-tortured though he had been, he could still distinguish between the raving of dementia and the ungoverned cry of a soul just snatched from death and startled beyond measure by the apparition of a long-forgotten daughter.
Nevertheless he must have been mistaken. Mrs. Carmac had given way to a delusion. He knew that the absence of children had provided the only sorrow in the lives of a most devoted couple, and the thought had evidently taken a subconscious form in the mind of a woman whose faculties were bemused by cold and fear. Reviewing matters in the new light vouchsafed by the garrulous Breton, he saw that nearly every circumstance bore out the theory that Mrs. Carmac and the late Mrs. Ingersoll were sisters. Ingersoll's thoughtfulness in sending Tollemache with a message concerning the peculiarities of French law (the legal procedure with regard to the dead man had been intrusted to a local notary), the fact that the niece visited her aunt, and now the crushing discovery that the girl's mother was actually remembered in the village, seemed to put completely out of court any wild theory of an invalid marriage following an American divorce.
Of course if such a thing could be proved, if Carmac's English will could be upset in favor of Rupert Fosdyke, above all if Harvey Raymond alone knew the whole truth, and could wring stiff terms from Fosdyke before the latter so much as guessed at the grounds for a successful claim, then indeed a new era would open up before the eyes of one who hungered for wealth without having a spark of the genius that might create it honestly.
He was of that large and increasing class which is in many respects the worst product of modern social conditions. He had little to do, was well paid, and traveled far and wide, because Mr. and Mrs. Carmac were restless beings, and seldom lived more than three months of each year on the delightful estate they owned in Surrey. Nevertheless a canker of discontent had eaten into his moral fiber. He was a disappointed man, unscrupulous, greedy, a potential blackmailer.