'Make your mind easy,' she said shortly; 'he suits me—I stay. I went with him, well, because I was dull—and because I wanted to make you smart for it, if you're keen to know!—but if you think I am anxious to go home, to be cried over by Dora and lectured by you, you're vastly mistaken. I can manage him! I have my hold on him—he knows very well what I am worth to him.'
She threw her head back superbly against the iron shaft, putting one arm round it and resting her hot cheek against it as though for coolness.
'Why should we argue?' he said sharply—after a wretched silence. 'I didn't come for that. If you won't leave him I have only this to say. On the day he marries you, if the evidence of the marriage is satisfactory to an English lawyer I have discovered in Paris and whose address I will give you, six hundred pounds will be paid over to you. It is there now, in the lawyer's hands. If not, I go home, and the law does not compel me to hand you over one farthing.'
She was silent, and began to pace up and down.
'Montjoie despises marriage,' she said presently.
'Try whether he despises money too,' said David, and could not for the life of him keep the sarcastic note out of his voice.
She bit her lip.
'And when, if it is done, must this precious thing be settled?'
'If your marriage does not take place within a month, Mr. O'Kelly—I will leave you his address,' he put his hand into his pocket—'has orders to return the money—'
'To whom?' she inquired, struck by his sudden break.