Chapter III: A Scruple

The "Sire" de Corancez--as Madame de Carlsberg disdainfully called the Southerner--was not a man to neglect the slightest detail that he thought advantageous to a well-studied plan. His father, the vine-grower, used to say to him, "Marius? Don't worry about Marius. He's a shrewd bird." And, in truth, at the very moment when the Baroness Ely was beginning her melancholy confidences in the deserted garden alleys of the Villa Brion, this adroit person discovered Hautefeuille at the station, installed him in the train between Chésy and Dickie Marsh and manœuvred so skilfully that before reaching Nice the American had invited Pierre to visit the next morning his yacht, the Jenny, anchored in the roadstead at Cannes. But the next morning would be the last hours that Corancez could spend at Cannes before his departure, ostensibly for Marseilles and Barbentane, in reality for Italy.

He had the promise of Florence Marsh that Hautefeuille's visit to the _Jenny_ would be immediately followed by an invitation to take part in the cruise of the 14th. Would Pierre accept? Above all, would he consent to act as witness in that clandestine ceremony, at which the queerly named Venetian _abbé_, Don Fortunato Lagumina, would pronounce the words of eternal union between the millions of the deceased Francesco Bonnacorsi and the heir of the doubtful scutcheon of the Corancez? The Provençal had but this last morning to persuade his friend.

But he had no fear of failure, and at half-past nine, fresh, in spite of the fact that he had returned from Monte Carlo on the last train the night before, he briskly descended the steps of the hill that separates Cannes from the Gulf of Juan. Pierre Hautefeuille had installed himself for the winter in one of those hotels whose innumerable flower-framed windows line this height, which the people of Cannes have adorned with the exotic name of California.

It was one of those mornings of sun and wind--of fresh sunlight and warm breeze--which are the charm of winter on this coast. Roses bloomed by hundreds on hedge and terrace. The villas, white or painted, shone through their curtains of palm trees and araucarias, aloes and bamboos, mimosas and eucalyptus. The peninsula of La Croisette projected from the hill toward the islands, and its dark forest of pines, flecked with white houses, arose in strong relief between the tender blue of the sky and the sombre blue of the sea, and the Sire de Corancez went on gayly, a bouquet of violets in the buttonhole of the most becoming coat that a complacent tailor ever fashioned for a handsome young man in chase of an heiress, his small feet tightly fitted in russet shoes, a straw hat on his thick, black hair; his eyes bright, his teeth glistening in a half smile, his beard lustrous and scented, his movements graceful.

He was happy in the animal portion of his nature; a happiness that was wholly physical and sensual. He was able to enjoy the divine sunlight, the salt breeze, odorous with flowers; this atmosphere, soft as spring; to enjoy the morning and his own sense of youth, while the calculator within him soliloquized upon the character of the man he was about to rejoin and upon the chances of success:--

"Will he accept or not? Yes, he will beyond any doubt, when he knows that Madame de Carlsberg will be on the boat. Should I tell him? No; I would offend him. How his arm trembled in mine last night when I mentioned her name! Bah! Marsh or his niece will speak to him about her, or they are no Americans. That is their way--and it succeeds with them--to speak right out whatever they think or wish.--If he accepts? Is it prudent to have one more witness? Yes; the more people there are in the secret, the more Navagero will be helpless when the day comes for the great explanation.--A secret? With three women knowing it? Madame de Carlsberg will tell it all to Madame Brion. It will go no further on that side. Flossie Marsh will tell it all to young Verdier. And it will stop there, too. Hautefeuille? Hautefeuille is the most reliable of all.--How little some men change! There is a boy I have scarcely seen since our school-days. He is just as simple and innocent as when we used to confess our sins to the good Father Jaconet. He has learned nothing from life. He does not even suspect that the Baroness is as much in love with him as he with her. She will have to make a declaration to him. If we could talk it over together, she and I. Let nature have her way. A woman who desires a young man and does not capture him--that may occur, perhaps, in the horrible fogs of the North, but in this sunlight and among these flowers, never.--Good, here is his hotel. It would be convenient for a rendezvous, these barracks. So many people going in and out that a woman might enter ten times without being noticed."

Hôtel des Palmes--the name justified by a tropical garden--appeared in dazzling letters on the façade of this building, whose gray walls, pretentiously decorated with gigantic sculpture, arose at a bend of the road. The balconies were supported by colossal caryatides, the terrace by fluted columns. Pierre Hautefeuille occupied a modest room in this caravansary, which had been recommended by his doctor; and if, on the night before, his sentimental reverie in the hall at Monte Carlo had seemed paradoxical, his daily presence in a cell of this immense cosmopolitan hive was no less so.

Here he lived, retired, absorbed in his chimerical fancies, enveloped in the atmosphere of his dreams, while beside him, above him, and below him swarmed the agitated colony which the Carnival attracts to the coast. Again on this morning the indulgent mockery of Corancez might have found a fitting subject, if the heavy stones of the building had suddenly become transparent, and the enterprising Southerner had seen his friend, with his elbows on the writing-table, hypnotized before the gold box purchased the evening before; and his mockery would have changed to veritable stupefaction, had he been able to follow the train of this lover's thoughts, who, ever since his purchase, had been a prey to one of those fevers of remorseful anxiety which are the great tragedies of a timid and silent passion.

This fever had begun in the train on the way back from Monte Carlo amid the party collected by Corancez. One of Chésy's remarks had started it.

"Is it true," Chésy asked of Marius, "that Baroness Ely lost this evening a hundred thousand francs, and that she sold her diamonds to one of the gamblers in order to continue?"

"How history is written!" Corancez responded. "I was there with Hautefeuille. She lost this evening just what she had gained, that is all; and she sold a trifling jewel worth a hundred louis,--a gold cigarette case."

"The one she always uses?" asked Navagero; then gayly, "I hope the Archduke will not hear this story. Although a democrat, he is severe on the question of good form."

"Who do you suppose would tell him?" Corancez replied.

"The aide-de-camp, _parbleu_," exclaimed Chésy. "He spies into everything she does, and if the jewel is gone, the Archduke will hear of it."

"Bah! She will buy it back to-morrow morning. Monte Carlo is full of these honest speculators. They, in fact, are the only ones who win at the game."

While Hautefeuille was listening to this dialogue, every word of which pierced to his heart, he caught a glance from the Marquise Bonnacorsi--a look of curiosity, full of meaning to the timid lover, for he plainly read in it the knowledge of his secret. The subject of the conversation immediately changed, but the words that had been spoken and the expression in Madame Bonnacorsi's eyes sufficed to fill the young man with a remorse as keen as though the precious box had been taken from the pocket of his evening coat, and shown to all these people.

"Could the Marquise have seen me buy it?" he asked himself, trembling from head to foot. "And if she saw me, what does she think?"

Then, as she entered into conversation with Florence Marsh, and appeared once more to be perfectly indifferent to his existence, "No, I am dreaming," he thought; "it is not possible that she saw me. I was careful to observe the people who were there. I was mistaken. She looked at me in that fixed way of hers which means nothing. I was dreaming. But what the others said was not a dream. This cigarette case she will wish to buy back to-morrow. She will find the merchant. He will tell her that he has sold it. He will describe me. If she recognizes me from his description?"

At this thought he trembled once more. In a sudden hallucination he saw the little parlor of the Villa Helmholtz--the Archduke had thus named his house after the great savant who had been his master. The lover saw the Baroness Ely sitting by the fire in a dress of black lace with bows of myrtle green, the one of her dresses which he most admired. He saw himself entering this parlor in the afternoon; he saw the furniture, the flowers in their vases, the lamps with their tinted shades, all these well-loved surroundings, and a different welcome--a look in which he would perceive, not by a wild hypothesis this time, but with certitude, that Madame de Carlsberg knew _what he had done_. The pain which the mere thought of this caused him brought him back to reality.

"I am dreaming again," he said to himself, "but it is none the less certain that I have been very imprudent--even worse, indelicate. I had no right to buy that box. No, I had no right. I risked, in the first place, the chance of being seen, and of compromising her. And then, even as it is, if some indiscreet remark is made, and if the Prince makes an investigation?"

In another hallucination he saw the Archduke Henry Francis and the Baroness face to face. He saw the beautiful, the divine eyes of the woman he loved fill with tears. She would suffer in her private life once more, and from his fault, on account of him who would have given all his blood with delight in order that mouth so wilfully sad might smile with happiness. Thus the most imaginary, but also the most painful of anxieties commenced to torture the young man, while Miss Marsh and Corancez in a corner of the compartment exchanged in a low voice these comments:--

"I shall ask my uncle to invite him, that's settled," said the young American girl. "Poor boy, I have a real sympathy for him. He looks so melancholy. They have pained him by talking so of the Baroness."

"No, no," said Corancez. "He is in despair at having missed, by his own fault, a chance of speaking with his idol this evening. Imagine, at the moment when I went up to her--piff--my Hautefeuille disappeared. He is remorseful at having been too timid. That is a sentiment which I hope never to feel."

Remorse. The astute Southerner did not realize how truly he had spoken. He was mistaken in regard to the motive, but he had given the most precise and fitting term to the emotion which kept Hautefeuille awake through the long hours of the night, and which this morning held him motionless before the precious case. It was as though he had not bought it, but had stolen it, so much did he suffer to have it there before his eyes. What was he to do now? Keep it? That had been his instinctive, his passionate desire when he hurried to the merchant. This simple object would make the Baroness Ely so real, so present to him. Keep it? The words he had heard the night before came back to him, and with them all his apprehension. Send it back to her? What could be more certain to make the young woman seek out who it was who had taken such a liberty, and if she did find out?

A prey to these tumultuous thoughts, Pierre turned the golden box in his hands. He spelled out the absurd inscription written in precious stones on the cover of the case: "M.E. moi. 100 C.C.--Aimez-moi sans cesser," the characters said; and the lover thought that this present, bearing such a tender request, must have been given to Madame de Carlsberg by the Archduke or some very dear friend.

What agony he would have felt had the feminine trinket been able to relate its history and all the quarrels that its sentimental device had caused during the _liaison_ of the Baroness Ely with Olivier du Prat. How often Du Prat, too, had tried to discover from whom his mistress had received this present--one of those articles whose unnecessary gaudiness savors of adultery. And he could never draw from the young woman the name of the mysterious person who had given it, of whom Ely had said to Madame Brion, "It was some one who is no longer in this world."

In truth, this suspicious case was not a souvenir of anything very culpable; the Baroness had received it from one of the Counts Kornow. She had had with him one of her earliest flirtations, pushed far enough--as the inscription testified--but interrupted before its consummation by the departure of the young Count for the war in Turkey. He had been killed at Plevna.

Yes, how miserable Hautefeuille would have been if he could have divined the words that had been uttered over this case--words of romantic tenderness from the young Russian, words of outrageous suspicion from his dearest friend, that Olivier whose portrait--what irony!--was on the table before him at this moment. That heart so young, still so intact, so pure, so confiding, was destined to bleed for that which he did not suspect on this morning when, in all his delicacy, he accused no one but himself.

Suddenly a knock on the door made him start in terror. He had been so absorbed in his thoughts that he had not noticed the time, or remembered the rendezvous with his friend. He hid the cigarette case in the table drawer, with all the agitation of a discovered criminal. "Come in," he said in a quivering voice; and the elegant and jovial countenance of Corancez appeared at the door. With that slight accent which neither Paris nor the princely salons of Cannes had been able wholly to correct, the Southerner began:--

"What a country mine is, all the same! What a morning, what air, what sunlight! They are wearing furs up there, and we--" He threw open his light coat. Then, as his eye caught the view, he continued, thinking aloud: "I have never before climbed up to your lighthouse. What a scene! How the long ridge of the Esterel stretches out, and what a sea! A piece of waving satin. This would be divine with a little more space. You are not uncomfortable with only one room?"

"Not in the least," said Hautefeuille; "I have so few things with me--merely a few books."

"That's so," Corancez replied, glancing over the narrow room, which, with the modest case opened on the bureau, had the look of an officer's tent. "You have not the mania for _bric-à-brac_. If you could see the ridiculously complete dressing-case that I carry around with me, not to speak of a trunk full of knick-knacks. But I have been corrupted by the foreigners. You have remained a true Frenchman. People never realize how simple, sober, and economical the French are. They are too much so in their hate of new inventions. They detest them as much as the English and Americans love them--you, for example. I am sure that it was only by accident you came to this ultra-modern hotel, and that you abominate the luxury and the comfort."

"You call it luxury?" Hautefeuille interrupted, shrugging his shoulders. "But there is truth in what you say. I don't like to complicate my existence."

"I know that prejudice," Corancez replied; "you are for the stairway instead of the lift, for the wood fire instead of the steam heater, for the oil lamp instead of the electric light, for the post instead of the telephone. Those are the ideas of old France. My father had them. But I belong to the new school. Never too many hot and cold water faucets. Never too many telegraph and telephone wires. Never too many machines to save you the slightest movement. They have one fault, however, these new hotels. Their walls are thin as a sheet of paper; and as I have something serious to say to you, and also a great service to ask of you, we will go out, if you are willing. We'll walk to the port, where Marsh will wait for us at half-past ten. Does that suit you? We'll kill time by taking the longest way."

The Provençal had a purpose in proposing the "longest way." He wished to lead his friend past the garden of Madame de Carlsberg.

Corancez was something of a psychologist, and was guided by his instinct with more certainty than he could have been by all the theories of M. Taine on the revival of images. He was certain that the proposition in regard to the plot at Genoa would be accepted by Hautefeuille for the sake of a voyage with the Baroness Ely. The more vividly the image of the young woman was called up to the young man, the more he would be disposed to accept Corancez's proposition.

Thanks to his innocent Machiavelism, the two friends, instead of going straight toward the port, took the road that led to the west of California. They passed a succession of wild ravines, still covered with olives, those beautiful trees whose delicate foliage gives a silver tone to the genuine Provençal landscape. The houses grew more rare and isolated, till at certain places, as in the valley of Urie, one seemed to be a hundred miles from town and shore, so completely did the wooded cliffs hide the sea and the modern city of Cannes.

The misanthropy of the Archduke Henry Francis had led him to build his villa on this very ridge, at whose foot lay that species of park--inevitably inhabited and preserved by the English--through which Corancez conducted Hautefeuille. They came to a point where the Villa Helmholtz suddenly presented itself to their view. It was a heavy construction of two stories, flanked on one side by a vast greenhouse and on the other by a low building with a great chimney emitting a dense smoke. The Southerner pointed to the black column rising into the blue sky and driven by the gentle breeze through the palms of the garden.

"The Archduke is in his laboratory," he said; "I hope that Verdier is making some beautiful discovery to send to the Institute."

"You don't think, then, that he works himself?" asked Pierre.

"Not much," said Corancez. "You know the science of princes and their literature. However, that doesn't matter to me in the least. But what I don't like at all is the way he treats his charming wife--for she is charming, and she has once more proved it to me in a circumstance that I shall tell you about; and you heard what they said last night, that she is surrounded by spies."

"Even at Monte Carlo?" Hautefeuille exclaimed.

"Above all at Monte Carlo," replied Corancez. "And then, it is my opinion that if the Archduke does not love the Baroness he is none the less jealous, furiously jealous, of her, and nothing is more ferocious than jealousy without love. Othello strangled his wife for a handkerchief he had given her, and he adored her. Think of the row the Archduke would make about the cigarette case she sold if it was he who gave it to her."

These remarks, in a tone half serious, half joking, contained a piece of advice which the Southerner wished to give his friend before departing. It was as though he had said in plain language: "Court this pretty woman as much as you like; she is delicious; but beware of the husband." He saw Hautefeuille's expressive face suddenly grow clouded, and congratulated himself on being understood so quickly. How could he have guessed that he had touched an open wound, and that this revelation of the Prince's jealousy had but intensified the pain of remorse in the lover's tender conscience?

Hautefeuille was too proud, too manly, with all his delicacy, to harbor for a moment such calculations as his friend had diplomatically suggested. He was one of those who, when they love, are afflicted by nothing but the suffering of the loved one, and who are always ready to expose themselves to any danger. That which he had seen the night before in the hallucination of his first remorsefulness he saw again, and more clearly, more bitterly,--that possible scene between the Archduke and the Baroness Ely, of which he would be the cause, if the Prince learned of the sale of the case, and the Baroness was unable to recover it.

So he listened distractedly to Corancez's talk, who, however, had had the tact to change the conversation and to relate one of the humorous anecdotes of his repertory. What interest could Pierre have in the stories, more or less true, of the absurdities or scandals of the coast? He did not again pay attention to his companion until, having reached La Croisette, Corancez decided to put the great question. Along this promenade, more crowded than usual, a person was approaching who would furnish the Southerner with the best pretext for beginning his confidence; and, suddenly taking the arm of the dreamer to arouse him from his reveries, Corancez whispered:--

"I told you a moment ago that Madame de Carlsberg had of late been particularly good to me, and I told you, as we left the hotel, that I had a service to ask of you, a great service. You do not perceive the connection between these two circumstances? You will soon understand the enigma. Do you see who is coming toward us?"

"I see the Count Navagero," Hautefeuille answered, "with his two dogs and a friend whom I do not know. That is all."

"It is the whole secret of the enigma. But wait till they pass. He is with Lord Herbert Bohun. He will not deign to speak to us."

The Venetian moved toward them, more English in appearance than the Englishman by his side. This child of the Adriatic had succeeded in realizing the type of the Cowes or Scarborough "masher," and with such perfection that he escaped the danger of becoming a caricature. Clothed in a London suit of that cloth which the Scotch call "harris" from its place of origin, and which has a vague smell of peat about it, his trousers turned up according to the London manner, although not a drop of rain had fallen for a week, he was walking with long, stiff strides, one hand grasping his cane by the middle, the other hand holding his gloves.

His face was smoothly shaven; he wore a cap of the same cloth as that of his coat, and smoked a briarwood pipe of the shape used at Oxford. Two small, hairy Skye terriers trotted behind him, their stubby legs supporting a body three times as long as it was high. From what tennis match was he returning? To what game of golf was he on his way? His red hair, of that color so frequent in the paintings of Bonifazio, an inheritance from the doges, his ancestors, added the finishing touch to his incredible resemblance to Lord Herbert.

There was, however, one difference between them. As they passed Corancez and Hautefeuille, the twins uttered a good morning--Bohun's entirely without accent, while the syllables of the Venetian were emphasized in a manner excessively Britannic.

"You have observed that man," Corancez continued, when they had passed beyond earshot, "and you take him for an Anglomaniac of the most ridiculous kind. But, when you scratch his English exterior, what do you suppose you find beneath it? An Italian of the time of Machiavelli, as unscrupulous as though he were living at the court of the Borgias. He would poison us all, you, me, any one who crossed his path. I have read it in his hand, but don't be uneasy; he has not yet put his principles into practice, only he has tortured for six years a poor, defenceless woman, the adorable Madame Bonnacorsi, his sister. I do not attempt to explain it. But for six years he has so terrorized over this woman that she has not taken a step without his knowing of it, has not had a servant that he has not chosen, has not received a letter without having to account for it to him. It is one of those domestic tyrannies which you would not believe possible unless you had read of them in the newspaper reports, or actually witnessed it as I have. He does not wish her to remarry, because he lives on her great fortune. That is the point."

"How infamous!" Hautefeuille exclaimed. "But are you sure?"

"As sure as I am that I see Marsh's boat," replied Corancez, pointing to the trim yacht at anchor in the bay. And he continued lightly, in a tone that was sentimental and yet manly, not without a certain grace: "And what I am going to ask you is to help me circumvent this pretty gentleman. We Provençaux have always a Quixotic side to our character. We have a mania for adventurous undertakings; it is the sun that puts that in our blood. If Madame Bonnacorsi had been happy and free, doubtless I should not have paid much attention to her. But when I learned that she was unhappy, and was being miserably abused, I fell wildly in love with her. How I came to let her know of this and to find that she loved me I will tell you some other day. If Navagero is from Venice, I am from Barbentane. It is a little further from the sea, but we understand navigation. At any rate, I am going to marry Madame Bonnacorsi, and I am going to ask you to be my groomsman."

"You are going to marry Madame Bonnacorsi?" repeated Hautefeuille, too astonished to answer his friend's request. "But the brother?"

"Oh! he knows nothing about it," Corancez replied. "But that is just where the good fairy came into the story in the form of the charming Baroness Ely. Without her, Andryana--permit me thus to call my _fiancée_--would never have brought herself to say 'yes.' She loved me, and yet she was afraid. Do not misjudge her. These tender, sensitive women have strange timidities, which are difficult to understand. She was afraid, but chiefly for me. She feared a quarrel between her brother and me--hot words, a duel. Then I proposed and persuaded her to accept the most romantic and unusual expedient,--a secret marriage. On the 14th of next month, God willing, a Venetian priest, in whom she has confidence, will marry us in the chapel of a palace at Genoa. In the meantime I shall disappear. I am supposed to be at Barbentane among my vineyards. And on the 13th, while Navagero is playing the Englishman on Lord Herbert Bohun's yacht, with the Prince of Wales and other royal personages, Marsh's boat, to which you will be invited, will sail away with a number of passengers, among whom will be the woman I love the most in the world, and to whom I shall devote my life, and the friend I most esteem, if he does not refuse my request. What does he answer?"

"He answers," said Hautefeuille, "that if ever he was astonished in his life, he is so now. You, Corancez, in love, and so much in love that you will sacrifice your liberty. You have always seemed so careless, so indifferent. And a secret marriage. But it will not remain a secret twenty-four hours. I know your exuberance. You always tell everything you know to everybody. But I thank you for the friendship you have shown me, and I will be your groomsman."

As he said these last words he shook Corancez's hand with that simple seriousness which he showed for everything. His companion had touched him deeply. Doubtless this simplicity and candid trustfulness embarrassed the Southerner. He was very willing to profit from them, but he felt a little ashamed at abusing too much this loyal nature, whose charm he also felt, and he mingled with his thanks a confession such as he had never before made to any one.

"Don't think me so exuberant. The sun always has that effect. But, in truth, we men of the South never say what we mean.--Here we are. Remember," he said, with his finger on his lips, "Miss Marsh knows all, Marsh knows nothing."

"One word more," Hautefeuille replied; "I have promised to be your groomsman. But you will permit me to go to Genoa another way? I don't know these people well enough to accept an invitation of that kind."

"I trust to Flossie Marsh to overcome your scruples," said Corancez, unable to repress a smile. "You will be one of the passengers on the _Jenny_. Do you know why this boat is called the _Jenny_? Only an Anglo-Saxon would permit himself seriously such a play upon words. You have heard of Jenny Lind, the singer? Well, the reason the facetious Marsh gave this pretty name to his floating villa was _because she keeps the high seas_. And every time he explains this he is so amazed at his wit that he fairly chokes with laughter.--But what a delicious day."

The elegant lines of the _Jenny's_ rigging and white hull could now be seen close at hand. She seemed the young, coquettish queen of the little port, amid the fishing boats, yawls, and coasters that swarmed about the quay. A group of sailors on the stone curb sang while they mended their nets. On the ground-floor of the houses were offices of ship companies, or shops, stored with provisions and tackle. The working population, totally absent from this city of leisure, is concentrated upon the narrow margin of the port, and gives it that popular picturesqueness so refreshing in contrast with the uniform banality imprinted on the South by its wealthy visitors. It was doubtless an unconscious sense of that contrast that led the plebeian Marsh to choose this point of the roadstead.

This self-made man who also had labored on the quays at Cleveland, by the shores of Lake Erie, whose waters are more stormy than the Mediterranean, despised at heart the vain and vapid society in which he lived. He lived in it, however, because the cosmopolitan aristocracy was still another world to conquer.

When he regaled some grand duke or prince regent on board his yacht, what voluptuous pride he might feel on looking at these fishermen of his own age, and saying to himself, while he smoked his cigar with the royal or imperial highness: "Thirty years ago these fishermen and I were equals. I was working just as they are. And now?" As Hautefeuille and Corancez did not figure on any page of the Almanach de Gotha, the master of the yacht did not consider it necessary to await his visitors on deck; and when the young men arrived they found no one but Miss Flossie Marsh, seated on a camp-stool before an easel, sketching in water colors. Minutely, patiently, she copied the landscape before her,--the far-off group of islands melting together like a long, dark carapace fixed on the blue bay, the hollow and supple line of the gulf, with the succession of houses among the trees, and, above all, the water of such an intense azure, dotted with white sails, and over all that other azure of the sky, clear, transparent, luminous. The industrious hand of the young girl copied this scene in forms and colors whose exactitude and hardness revealed a very small talent at the service of a very strong will.

"These American women are astonishing," whispered Corancez to Hautefeuille. "Eighteen months ago she had never touched a brush. She began to work and she has made herself an artist, as she will make herself a _savante_ if she marries Verdier. They construct talents in their minds as their dentists build gold teeth in your mouth.--She sees us."

"My uncle is busy at present," said the young girl, after giving them a vigorous handshake. "I tell him he should call the boat his office. As soon as we reach a port his telephone is connected with the telegraph station, and the cable begins to communicate with Marionville. Let us say good morning to him, and then I will show you the yacht. It is pretty enough, but an old model; it is at least ten years old. Mr. Marsh is having one built at Glasgow that will beat this one and a good many others. It is to measure four thousand tons. The _Jenny_ is only eighteen hundred. But here is my uncle."

Miss Florence had led the young men across the deck of the boat, with its planking as clean, its brass-work as polished, its padded furniture, of brown straw, as fresh, its Oriental rugs as precious as though this flooring, this metal, these armchairs, these carpets belonged to one of the villas on the coast, instead of to this yacht which had been tossed on all the waves of the Atlantic and Pacific. And the room into which the young girl introduced them could not have presented a different aspect had it been situated in Marionville on the fifth story of one of those colossal buildings which line the streets with their vast cliffs of iron and brick. Three secretaries were seated at their desks. One of them was copying letters on a typewriter, another was telephoning a despatch, the third was writing in shorthand at the dictation of the little, thick-set, gray-faced man whom Corancez had shown to Hautefeuille at the table of _trente-et-quarante_. This king of Ohio paused to greet his visitors:--

"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:--

"Miss Flossie, may we see the death chamber?"

"If it would interest M. Hautefeuille," said Florence Marsh, who had not ceased to regret her thoughtless remark. "My uncle had an only daughter," she continued, "who was named Marion, after my poor aunt. You know that Mr. Marsh, who lost his wife when he was very young, named his town after her, Marionville. My cousin died four years ago. My uncle was almost insane with grief. He wished nothing to be altered in the room she occupied on the yacht. He put her statue in it, and she has always around her the flowers she loved in life. Wait, look, but do not go in."

She opened the door, and the young men saw, by the light of two blue-shaded lamps, a room all draped in faded pink. It was filled with a profusion of small objects such as might be possessed by a spoiled child of a railroad magnate--a toilet case of silver and gold, jewels in glass boxes, portraits in carved frames--and in the centre, on a real bed of inlaid wood, lay the statue of the dead girl, white, with closed eyelids, the lips slightly parted, among sheaves of carnations and of orchids. The silence of this strange shrine, the mystery, the delicate perfume of the flowers, the unlooked-for poetry of this posthumous idolatry, in the boat of a yachtsman and a man of business, would, in any other circumstances, have appealed to the romanticism innate in Pierre Hautefeuille's heart. But during all this visit he had had but one thought,--to escape from Miss Marsh and Corancez, to be alone in order to reflect upon the evidence, so painfully unexpected, that his deepest secret had been discovered. So it was a relief to depart from the boat, and still a torture to have the company of his friend a few minutes longer.

"Did you notice," said Corancez, "how much the dead girl resembles Madame de Chésy? No? Well, when you meet her some time with Marsh, be sure to observe her. The canal by the Great Lakes, his railroad, the buildings of Marionville, his mines, his boat--he forgets them all. He thinks of his dead daughter. If little Madame de Chésy should ask him for the Kohinoor, he would set out to find it, for the mere sake of this resemblance. Isn't it singular, such a sentimental trait in a rogue of his stamp? His character ought to please you. If you are interested in him, you will be able to study him at your leisure on the 13th, 14th, and 15th. And let me thank you again for what you are going to do for me. If you have anything to communicate to me, my address is Genoa, _poste restante_. And now I must return to look after the packing. Will you let me take you part of the way? I see the old coachman whom I told to come here at eleven."

Corancez hailed an empty cab which was passing, drawn by two small Corsican ponies, who saluted the young man with a wink, his "Good day, Monsieur Marius" revealing the familiarity of long conversations between these two Provençaux. Pascal Espérandien, otherwise known as the Old Man, was an alert little personage and very crafty, the pride of whose life was to make his two rats trot faster than the Russian horses of the grand dukes residing at Cannes. He harnessed them, trimmed them, ornamented them so fantastically that they drew from all Miss Marsh's compatriots, from Antibes to Napoule, the same exclamations of "How lovely, how enchanting, how fascinating!" that they would have uttered before a Raphael or a Worth dress, a polo match or a noted gymnast. Doubtless the wily old man, with his shrewd smile, possessed diplomatic talents which might make him useful in a secret intrigue, for the prudent Corancez never took any other carriage, especially when he had, as on this morning, a rendezvous with the Marquise Andryana. He was to see her for five minutes in the garden of a hotel where she had a call to make. Her carriage was to stand before one of the doors, the Old Man's equipage before another. So nothing could have been more agreeable than Pierre's response to this clandestine _fiancé_.

"Thanks, but I prefer to walk."

"Then good-by," said Corancez, getting into the cab. And, parodying a celebrated verse, "To meet soon again, Seigneur, where you know, with whom you know, for what you know?"

The cab turned the corner of the Rue d'Antibes, and departed with furious speed. Hautefeuille was at last alone. He could filially face the idea which had been formulating itself in his thoughts with terrible precision ever since Miss Florence Marsh had spoken these simple words, "Your flirt, Madame de Carlsberg."

"They all three know that I love her--the Marquise, Corancez, and Miss Marsh. The look I caught from one of them last night, the remark and the smile of the other, and what the third one said, and her blush at having thought aloud--these are not dreams. They know I love her--But then, Corancez, last night, when he led me to the gambling-table, must have divined my thoughts. Such dissimulation!--is it possible? But why not? He acknowledged it himself awhile ago. To have concealed his sentiments for Madame Bonnacorsi, he must know how to keep a secret. He kept his and I have not kept mine. Who knows but they all three saw me buy the cigarette case? But no. They could not have had the cruelty to speak of it and to let it be spoken of before me. Marius is not malicious, neither is the Marquise, nor Miss Marsh. They know--that is all--they know. But how did they find out?"

Yes, how? With a lover of his susceptibility such a question would of necessity result in one of those self-examinations in which the scruples of conscience develop all their feverish illusions. On the way back to California and at the table where his luncheon was served to him apart, and afterward on a solitary walk to the picturesque village of Mougins, his life during these last few weeks came back to him, day by day, hour by hour, with a displacement of perspective which presented all the simple incidents of his naïve idyl as irreparable faults, crowned by that last fault, the purchase of the gold box in a public place and in full view of such people.

He recalled his first meeting with Madame de Carlsberg, in the Villa Chésy. How the peculiar beauty of the young woman and her strange charm had captivated him from the start, and how he had permitted himself to gaze upon her unrestrainedly, not dreaming that he was thus attracting attention and causing remarks! He remembered how often he had gone to her house, seizing every opportunity of meeting her and talking with her. The indiscretion of such assiduity could not have passed unperceived, any more than his continued presence at places where he had never gone before.

He saw again the golf field on those mornings when the Baroness Ely seemed so beautiful, in her piquant dress of the bright club colors--red and white. He saw himself at the balls, waiting in a corner of the room until she entered with that enchantment which emanated from every fold of her gown. He remembered how often at the confectioner's, or La Croisette, he had approached her, and how she had always invited him to sit at her table with such grace in her welcome. Each of these memories recalled her amiability, her delicate indulgence.

The memory of that charm, to which he yielded himself so completely, augmented his self-reproach. He recalled his imprudent actions, so natural when one does not feel one's self to be observed, but which appear to be such faults as soon as one is conscious of suspicion. For example, during the ten days on which the Baroness was absent from Cannes he had not once returned to those places where he had gone simply for the sake of seeing her. No one had met him at the golf field, nor at any evening party, nor at any five o'clock tea. He had not even made a call. Could this coincidence of his retirement with the absence of the Baroness have failed to be remarked? What had been said about it? Since his love had drawn him into this agitated world of pleasure he had often been pained by the light words thrown out at hazard at the women of this society, when they were not present. Had he been simply an object of ridicule, or had they taken advantage of his conduct to calumniate the woman he loved with a love so unhappy, ravaged by all the chimeras of remorse?

The words used by Florence Marsh--"your flirt"--gave a solid basis to these hypotheses. He had always despised the things which this word implied,--that shameful familiarity of a woman with a man, that dangling of her beauty before his desire, all the vulgarity and indiscretion which this equivocal relationship suggests. Could they think that he had such relations with Madame de Carlsberg? Had this evil interpretation been put upon his impulsiveness? Then he thought of the sorrows which he divined in the life of this unique woman, of the espionage that was spoken of, and again the hall at Monte Carlo appeared to him, and he could not understand why he had not realized the prodigious indelicacy of his action. He felt it now with most pitiful acuteness.

Haunted by these thoughts he prolonged his walk for hours and hours, and when in the twilight, suddenly grown dark and cold, as it happens in the South after days most soft and blue, as he entered the door of his hotel, the concierge handed him a letter on which he recognized the writing of Baroness Ely, his hands trembled as he tore open the envelope, sealed with the imprint of an antique stone--the head of Medusa. And if the head of this pagan legend had appeared alive before him he would not have been more overwhelmed than he was by the simple words of this note:--

"DEAR SIR--I have returned to Cannes and I should be happy if you could come to-morrow, at about half-past one, to the Villa Helmholtz. I wish to talk with you upon a serious matter. That is why I set this hour, at which I am most certain of not being interrupted."

And she signed herself, not as in her last letters with her full name, but as in the first she had written him--Baroness de Sallach Carlsberg. Hautefeuille read and re-read these cold, dry lines. It was evident that the young woman had learned of his purchase at Monte Carlo, and all the agony of his remorse revealed itself in these words, which he cried aloud as he entered his room:--

"She knows! I am lost!"