“Don’t!” she implored, drying his eyes with her scrap of a handkerchief. “Don’t say things like that.... You have paid enough already.”
“Paid!” he scoffed through set teeth. “Paid, with a ducking and a few bruises? You call that paying?”
She was silent. What should she do? Tell him the whole truth while she was about it—give him the whole terrific dose at one draught? Would this be wiser, more merciful? Would one desperate shock counteract the other? All this raced across her mind while she smoothed the telltale flatness of the pillow, the uncrumpled sheet with its embroidered crest and crown. She was for energetic measures by nature, by conviction based upon a deep knowledge of life, but still she hesitated; and, quite carried beyond himself by her silence, he made a violent effort to sit up.
Just an instant too late she pressed him down with both her strong, tender hands on his shoulders.
“Oh!” he said, faintly, understanding as in the revealing light of a lightning flash. “Oh! I have paid back a little, then? Tant mieux!” And this time he lay quite still, his struggle over.
CHAPTER XIX
One path there is, one only door
Of refuge from the blank Before,
And urge with reasons not a few
Regret and Gratitude thereto.
The Castle of Salvières, with its gorgeous “presence flag” fluttering in the salt sea-breeze, basked in the brilliant sun of a hot afternoon. On the south terrace Piotr was rushing after a huge pink-and-green ball that Marguerite was untiringly throwing for him. Below, on the to-day unwrinkled surface of the little harbor, the Sarcelle, one of the finest steam-yachts afloat, was being spruced and polished and scraped and rubbed—like a steeple-chaser before a race—for her straight flight across the ocean. Even from that height the cheery lilt of a bo’s’n’s silver pipe could be distinctly heard as it blew its shrill commands, and the almond-white decks shone bravely after their last holystoning.
“Where’s she going?” Master Piotr asked, running up with the gaily painted globe in his arms. “Garrassime and I were down there this morning, little darling Malou, and the steward said that Uncle Jean had ordered her to be ready by to-morrow. Is she going to England?”
“I don’t know,” Marguerite quite truthfully answered, for ever since the wreck she had asked no questions, dreading to probe into a situation which she realized was quite beyond her.