"Impossible to accompany you, gentlemen," he said. "While you are taking your promenade," he added, with that air of tranquil defiance by which the true Yankee manifests his contempt for the Old World, "we shall prepare a pretty voyage for you. But you Frenchmen are so contented at home that you never go anywhere. Do you know the Lake Region? Wait, here is the map. We have there, just on these four lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie—sixty thousand ships, amounting to thirty-two million tons, which transport every year three thousand five hundred million tons of merchandise. The problem is to put this fleet and the cities on the lakes—Duluth, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Marionville—in communication with Europe. The lakes empty into the ocean through the St. Lawrence. That is the road to follow. Unfortunately we have a little obstacle to overcome at the outlet of Lake Erie, an obstacle once and a half as high as the Arc de l'Etoile at Paris. I mean Niagara, and also the rapids at the outlet of Lake Ontario. They have made seven or eight canals, with locks which permit the passage of little boats. But we wish a free passage for any transatlantic vessel. This gentleman is about to conclude the affair," and Marsh pointed to the secretary at the telephone. "Our capital has been completed this morning—two hundred million dollars. In two years I shall sail home in the Jenny without once disembarking. I wish Marionville to become the Liverpool of the lakes. It has already a hundred thousand inhabitants. In two years we shall have a hundred and fifty thousand; that is equal to your Toulouse. In ten years, two hundred and fifty thousand—that is equal to your Bordeaux—and in twenty years we shall reach the five hundred and seventeen thousand of old Liverpool. We are a young people, and everything young should begin by progressing. You will excuse me for a few minutes, gentlemen?"
And the indefatigable worker had re-commenced his dictation before his niece had led from the room these degenerate children of slow Europe.
"Is he enough of an American for you?" Corancez whispered to Hautefeuille. "He knows it too well, and he acts his own rôle to the point of caricature. All their race appears in that." Then aloud: "You know, Miss Flossie, we can talk freely of our plan before Pierre. He consents to be my groomsman."
"Ah! how delightful!" the young girl cried; then added gayly: "I had no doubt you would accept. My uncle has asked me to invite you to join our little voyage to Genoa. You will come, then. That will be perfectly delicious. You will be rewarded for your kindness. You will have on board your flirt, Madame de Carlsberg."
As she said this the laughing girl looked the young man in the face. She had spoken without malice, with that simple directness upon which Corancez had justly counted.
The people of the Hew World have this frankness, which we take for brutality; it results from their profound and total acceptation of facts. Flossie Marsh knew that the presence of Baroness Ely on the yacht would be agreeable to Hautefeuille. Innocent American girl as she was, she did not imagine for a moment that the relations between this young man and a married woman could exceed the limits of a harmless flirtation or a permissible sentimentality. So it had seemed to her as natural to hazard this allusion to Pierre's sentiments as it would have been to hear an allusion to her own sentiments for Marcel Verdier. Thus it was strangely painful for her to see by the sudden pallor of the young man and the trembling of his lips that she had wounded him. And her face grew very red.
If the Americans in their simplicity are at times wanting in tact, they are sensitive to the highest degree; and these faults of tact which they commit so easily are a real affliction to them. But that blush only aggravated the painful surprise which Hautefeuille had felt at hearing Madame de Carlsberg thus spoken of. By an inevitable and overwhelming association of ideas he recalled Corancez's words, "I am sure that Miss Marsh will overcome your scruples," and the smile with which he said this. The look Madame Bonnacorsi had given him in the train the night before returned to his memory. By an intuition, unreasoned yet irrefutable, he perceived that the secret of his passion, hidden so profoundly in his heart, had been discovered by these three persons.
He quivered in every nerve with shame, revulsion, and distress; his heart palpitated so violently that he could scarcely breathe. The martyrdom of having to speak at this painful moment was spared him, thanks to Corancez, who saw clearly enough the effect produced upon his friend by the imprudence of the American girl, and, assuming the rôle of host, he began:—
"What do you think, Hautefeuille, of this salon and this smoking-room? Isn't it well arranged? This trimming of light, varnished wood—what neat and virile elegance! And this dining-room? And these cabins? One could spend months, years in them. You see, each one with its separate toilet-room."
And he led on his companion and the young girl herself. He remembered everything, with that astonishing memory for objects possessed by natures like his, created for action, adapted to realities; with his habitual self-assurance, he commented upon everything, from the pikes and guns on the middle deck, awaiting the pirates of the South Seas, to the machinery for filling and emptying the baths, and suddenly he asked Miss Marsh this question, singular enough in a passage of that colossal and luxurious toy which seemed to sum up the grand total of all inventions for the refinement of life:—