CHAPTER XII.

THE MEETING

Miss Eden recovered her self-possession sufficiently to hold out her hand. The angry M. Blaise took no notice of it.

“Won’t you shake hands with me? What have I done?” said she.

“What have you done?” retorted the stout gentleman, frowning upon her and her companion with strict impartiality. “That, mademoiselle, is what everybody has asked for two days. It is a strange thing for a young lady to disappear from among her friends.”

“I wasn’t very far off,” said she, humbly. “I was staying at the cottage of the grandmother of one of my guardian’s old servants.”

Monsieur Blaise made a slight motion with his head, which may have meant approval or disapproval, assent or dissent.

“And why, mademoiselle, did you indulge this caprice?”

Miss Eden hesitated.

“May I help to explain?” said Bayre, diffidently.

“And who are you, monsieur?” said the elder man, with some asperity.

“I am one of the nearest living relations of Mr Bartlett Bayre, whose namesake I am,” said the young man, readily.

This information evidently surprised Monsieur Blaise, and somewhat mollified him.

“Then you are a relation of this lady’s also?”

“No,” said Bayre. “But as she is my uncle’s ward, I naturally feel a great interest in her welfare.”

When he came to this point in his speech, Bayre saw that Monsieur Blaise began to look at him askance, so he paused.

“Ah! Ah! No doubt!” said Monsieur Blaise, drily. “And she feels an interest in you, and confides to you only the secret of her hiding-place.”

Both the young people protested in a breath, so volubly, and with so much detail, that they managed to convince the elderly gentleman that Bayre’s discovery of the lady had been an accidental one.

“And why did you go away?” Miss Eden hesitated. “Why, if you wanted to go away, did you not at least let _me_ know where you were?”

“The fact is, Monsieur Blaise,” broke in Bayre, “that my uncle’s conduct has been very eccentric lately, and that Miss Eden got frightened. But she doesn’t like to admit the fact.”

The manner of Monsieur Blaise changed and grew expansive in a moment.

“Ah, ah!” cried he, opening his small blue eyes very wide, so that they looked like two glass marbles in an undulating field of pink. “Now I begin to perceive! Eccentric! _Mon Dieu_, I am with you there. Our friend is eccentric beyond all experience!” He turned quickly to the girl. “Did he alarm you then, mademoiselle, by his eccentricity? What is it that he has done?”

Again she hesitated, and again Bayre spoke for her.

“My uncle showed no violence to her,” he said, “and I think it a pity she ever came away.”

Monsieur Blaise assented vehemently, with so many noddings of his head, that he looked like one of those toy figures whose loose heads swing in an open neck.

“Pity! Yes, yes, it is a pity,” he assented. “If you were afraid, Miss Eden, you should have consulted me. A word to your future husband--”

Miss Eden laughed a little and interrupted him.

“Oh, surely, Monsieur Blaise, you can’t want to marry me still? I am too erratic for you, you know.”

“Erratic, yes, so you are,” agreed the stout gentleman with deliberation. “But, _enfin_, it must be that one’s wife have some defects! And if one knows them beforehand, one is prepared.”

Miss Eden grew pale with consternation.

“But,” she began in a faint voice.

Before she could get any further, Monsieur interrupted her briskly, and indicating Bayre with a wave of the hand, said, with elaborate courtesy,--

“Ah! Is it that you wish to marry this gentleman?--this nephew of your guardian?”

The blood rushed into her pale face as she drew herself up.

“Oh, dear, no. I never thought of such a thing!” she cried emphatically.

Bayre drew himself up too, and Monsieur Blaise smiled so expansively that the flesh of his large round face rolled up into a succession of shiny pink ridges.

“It is well, it is well,” he said, “but we should be grateful for his excellent suggestion. I agree with him that you should go back to your guardian’s house, and this gentleman and I will discuss the matter of his kinsman’s eccentricity, which is undoubted. In the meantime you need have no cause for alarm while you have two friends near at hand. You are staying in Guernsey, monsieur?”

“For a few days only. I propose to go over to Creux, and to put up at the house of the boatman who lives by the landing-place. He lets lodgings, I know.”

“A good idea!” assented Monsieur Blaise. “In the meantime I should like to have a few further words with you upon this matter, when we have seen this young lady safe on her return journey.”

Miss Eden was taken aback by this sudden settling of her destinies, but she submitted, and returned at once to Madame Portelet’s cottage, to prepare her hostess for her departure. Monsieur Blaise took Bayre confidentially by the arm, and walked with him some distance, talking eagerly, and panting as he talked.

“My dear young friend,” he said earnestly, “I am glad you came here. I have had certain doubts, certain very odd suspicions, I may now confess, about our friend at Creux. With a member of his family who shares my opinion that something is wrong there, I am bold, I am fearless. We will go together, you and I, to the _château_, we will meet your uncle face to face, side by side.” And he waved his arm in the manner of one who storms a fortress sword in hand. “And we will solve our doubts without delay.”

Bayre caught at this suggestion, which was as opportune for him as for the other. With Monsieur Blaise he would no doubt be admitted to his uncle’s presence, and perhaps he would learn more in a single interview than he would have been able to do in six months of inquiry.

“You have definite suspicions?” asked he.

Monsieur Blaise gave one of his large nods.

“Do you think he is mad?”

“I will say nothing,” said the stout gentleman, “until I am more sure of what I think. In the meantime let us make an appointment. Shall we meet at the harbour this afternoon and cross together in time to reach the _château_ about four?”

“Just as you please.”

“It is agreed then,” said Monsieur Blaise, who for the most part spoke excellent English, dropping into the French idiom only when he was strongly excited. “Be at the harbour at half-past two and we will settle this matter without delay.”

The appointment made, perhaps Monsieur Blaise forgot all about Miss Eden, for he at once took leave of the younger man and returned to his own house.

Bayre lingered in the neighbourhood, hoping for another _tête-à-tête_ with Miss Eden.

He had not to wait long. She came back from the cottage at a brisk pace, with Nini to carry her travelling-bag. She blushed and would have passed him with a smile and a few words of casual greeting, but he would not allow that.

“Send the girl on,” said he, peremptorily, in a low voice.

After a moment’s hesitation Miss Eden obeyed.

“Now,” said he, with a certain imperiousness which surprised himself, “tell me what you meant by being so indignant when old Blaise asked if you wanted to marry me?”

The girl’s eyes sparkled, and she held her head high. He was right, however, in thinking that there was something not discouraging in their expression.

“Well, I don’t want to marry you,” replied she, blandly.

“Wouldn’t you rather do that than marry him? Now, tell the truth.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr Bayre, by putting on these stand-and-deliver airs with me. This morning you were quite meek by comparison.”

“Well, you put my back up by the lofty tone in which you told that old fellow that you didn’t want to marry me!” said Bayre, looking down into her face with assurance that surprised himself, as he noted that she was considerably agitated, although she held fast to a light and careless tone.

“Well, I didn’t mean to be rude, but what could I say? Would you have had me tell him that I _did_ want to marry you?”

And at last, for a swift instant, she let her bright eyes glance towards his face.

“Yes, that’s just what I would have had you say! At least, perhaps it would have been uncomfortable to say it to him, but I wish to Heaven you’d say it to _me_.”

Miss Eden shook her head gently.

“That’s not the sort of thing one does in a hurry,” she said. “I don’t know much about you, Mr Bayre.”

“You know a great deal more about me than you do about that amiable pink elephant your guardian chose for you. Yet you were ready, or half ready, to marry him even before you had seen him.”

“Ah, well, that was a different thing. That would have been a marriage of arrangement, in the French fashion, while the other--”

She checked herself, but it was too late. Bayre beamed all over his pale face as he made her stop, and whispered eagerly,--

“Say it, yes, say it. The other--would have been a marriage of inclination?”

But she would not answer him.

“Look, Nini’s dropping my bag!” she suddenly cried.

And with an adroit movement she ran past her companion, and waving him a farewell with her hand, reached Nini’s side and went on without looking back again.

Bayre, however, was not disheartened. He could hardly expect to carry off the prize so early in the fight, but there was something in Miss Eden’s manner this morning which bade him hope. Without being vain he felt that he ought to have a fair chance against the pink elephant.

Monsieur Blaise, however, was quite as fully convinced that Miss Eden was to be his as Bayre was that she inclined to himself. And as the middle-aged suitor and the young one crossed the rough channel between Guernsey and Creux together, Monsieur Blaise entertained Bayre, until he fell sea-sick, with accounts of the changes he contemplated making in his house-appointments in view of his approaching plunge into late matrimony.

The sea was calmer than it had been on the previous day, but the wind had not yet gone down altogether. The sky was grey with clouds, and the sea-birds were whirling wildly round the black rocks about the little island, as the boat was carried on the crest of a wave into the shelter of the little landing-place.

It was a matter of great difficulty to land Monsieur Blaise neatly, for he was demoralised by sea-sickness, and was by no means agile at the best of times.

Once on shore, however, excitement gave him speed, and although he panted a great deal, he managed to keep up a good pace as he and his companion walked together to the house of old Bartlett Bayre.

As he had anticipated, Marie Vazon, who opened the door to them, did not dare refuse admittance to the younger man when he was accompanied by so important a person as Monsieur Blaise. She was, however, in a state of considerable agitation as, after a moment’s hesitation, she turned abruptly and led the way into a little _salon_, where she left them, to announce their arrival to her master.

It was a commonplace room this, with the usual polished floor and simple furniture of a French country house; and it was not until, after the lapse of some minutes, Marie Vazon returned and led them through a long apartment, splendid with pictures, with Louis Quinze furniture, and with Sèvres china in priceless cabinets, that Bayre got his first idea of the treasures shut up in the old country house.

From this room they were shown into a smaller one, handsomely carpeted, and luxurious in glory of embroidered curtains and deep, square, carved armchairs, upholstered in damask of rich hues and surmounted by imperial eagles in ormolu.

Here, with his back to the light, crouching in skull-cap and dressing-gown over the wood fire, was the lean and shrunken figure of old Bartlett Bayre, spectacles on nose, and the eternal pipe in his mouth.

He looked up when they entered, and invited them to be seated, not in words, but by a half-sulky movement of the head.

Bayre sat at a little distance, but Monsieur Blaise, more bold, drew a chair to the side of the old recluse.

“You have been suffering, my friend,” said he.

“Not more than usual. I am getting old, old and broken,” answered Mr Bayre, fretfully, with a glance at his unwelcome nephew. “There are plenty of folk who rejoice in that fact, doubtless,” he added grimly.

Bartlett reddened, but said nothing.

“Ah, well, we must not worry ourselves upon those points,” said Monsieur Blaise, cheerfully. “We have come to congratulate you on having found your niece. She has returned, has she not?”

“Um, I believe so,” replied Mr Bayre, without enthusiasm. “Was it your doing, her going away?”

“I! What a question! No. I told her to come back, and I have come to suggest some final arrangements regarding her marriage with me.”

“Ah!”

As he spoke Monsieur Blaise had gradually drawn his chair nearer and nearer, and young Bayre, watching him intently, was surprised to see a sudden change which came over his fat face when he was close to the old man.

As for the recluse, he kept his eyes on the floor, or on the points of his own slippers, so that he noted nothing of this close scrutiny, of this change of expression on his visitor’s face.

All at once, without the slightest warning, Monsieur Blaise stood up. Bayre, still watching him, thought that he was going to denounce his host where he stood. But instead of that, Monsieur Blaise said abruptly, after drawing one of those stertorous breaths which the slightest exertion evoked from him,--

“Well, I will not trouble you now. I--I will come again when you are better. Till then, _au revoir, au revoir_.”

Old Mr Bayre looked up in surprise. His visitor was already at the door, and the younger man, agitated and curious, was by this time on his feet.

“You will have some coffee with me,” said the host, placing his hand upon a spring-bell on a table beside him.

“No, no, my friend, another time, another time.”

Monsieur Blaise was already out of the room, and as old Mr Bayre at once turned away and looked at the fire with no more interest in the visitors, his nephew, with a formal bow of which his host took no notice, followed his companion out of the room.

They passed through the handsome outer saloon, and the smaller one, and found Marie Vazon waiting in the hall. The girl looked from the one face to the other with sly eyes, but Monsieur Blaise said nothing until he and the younger man were out of the house.

Half-way down the avenue he drew a long breath, took off his hat, and wiped his bald forehead with a large coloured silk handkerchief. His face was pale, almost haggard, and his eyes still had the same scared expression as before.

“_Mon Dieu!_” cried he, “I have had such a shock! I have made such a discovery!”

“Well, what is it? what is it?” cried Bayre, in a fever.

But the older man drew in his lips, recovered himself, and shook his head.

“I am no spy upon my neighbours,” said he. “I would not bring disgrace upon them, no, no matter what they had done. But--I would not marry into that family--for fifty thousand pounds!”