Three days later, having screwed double stages out of One-eyed Magpie, Saint-Quentin arrived in company with Castor and Pollux. Dorothy would not hear of any abode but her beloved caravan, which was installed in the middle of the court-yard; and once more the five comrades settled down to their happy, careless life. Castor and Pollux fought with less vigor. Saint-Quentin fished in the lake. The captain, always immensely consequential, took the old baron under his care and related to him and to Goliath interminable yarns.
As for Dorothy, she was observing. They found that she wore an air of mystery, keeping her thoughts and proceedings to herself. She spent hours playing with her comrades superintending their exercises. Then, her eyes fixed on the old baron, who, accompanied by his faithful dog, with tottering gait and dulled eyes, would go and lean against a tree in the orchard, she watched everything which might be a manifestation of instinct in him or of a survival of the past. At other times Raoul surprised her in some corner, motionless and silent. It seemed to him then as if the whole affair was confined to her brain, and that it was there, much more than on the estate of Hillocks Manor that she was looking for the guiding clue.
Several days in succession she spent the hours in the loft of a granary where there were some bookshelves, and on them, old newspapers, bundles of papers, pamphlets, printed during the last century, histories of the district, communal reports, and parish records.
"Well," asked Raoul, laughing. "Are we getting on? I have an impression that your eyes are beginning to see more clearly."
"Perhaps. I won't say that they aren't."
The eyes of Dorothy! In that combination of charming things her face, it was they above everything which held one's attention. Large, almond-shaped and lengthened in the shadow of their black lashes, they surprised one by the inconceivable diversity of their coloring and expression: of the blue which changed like the blue of the sea according to the hour and the light; of a blue which seemed to vary with the successive thoughts which changed her expression. And these eyes, so delightful that it seemed that they must always be smiling or laughing, were in moments of meditation the gravest eyes that ever were, when she half-closed and fixed them on some image in her mind.
Raoul, now, only saw through them, and was only really interested in what they expressed. The fabulous story of the treasure and the medal was wholly summed up for him in the charming spectacle afforded by two beautiful eyes observant or thoughtful, troubled or joyful. And perhaps Dorothy allowed herself to be observed with a certain satisfaction. The love of this big, shy young fellow touched her by its respectfulness, she who had only known hitherto the brutal homage of desire.
One day she made him take a seat in the little boat which was moored to the shore of the lake, and letting it drift with the current she said to him:
"We are drawing near."
"Near what?" he asked, startled.