Tollemache, with a wisdom beyond his years, seemed to know when to strike and when to hold his hand. Raymond's suggestion was eminently reasonable. The evil spirit that had raised all this commotion could best allay it.
"Come, Yvonne," he said. "Let us leave Mrs. Carmac to determine this matter as she thinks fit. I offer no opinion. Mrs. Carmac has not compounded a felony,--that responsibility rests with me,--and, if she chooses to employ Raymond in a personal undertaking, I cannot interfere. He knows the penalty if she is troubled by any future act of his. I'll hunt him round the globe!"
Yvonne never knew what terms her mother made with Raymond. That they did not err on the side of parsimony may be taken for granted. Long after the tornado that swept through Pont Aven that Christmastide was forgotten by all save a few, the ex-secretary was able to buy a share in an automobile agency.
Lorry was hugely amused as the two descended the stairs. "Socrates believes there isn't any guile in my composition," he grinned. "I wonder what he'll say when he reads the screed to which that beauty has just put his left-handed signature?"
"Dad will agree with me that you carried a very difficult matter through with great skill, Lorry," said Yvonne.
"But the joke is that if Raymond stuck to his guns I was done for. Who cares tuppence whether a skunk like him goes to prison or not? Not a soul! But the whole press of Europe would stand up on its hind legs and roar if the Carmac millions were thrown into the melting pot of the law courts. Don't you see, Yvonne, I had to rush Raymond off his feet. I've broken about twenty statutes made and provided. If he had shown one quarter the nerve in that room which he displayed when the Stella was drifting on to the reef, he could have laughed at me."
"For all that, Lorry, you were very clever, and I think you're a dear," said Yvonne quietly.
Neither her father nor her lover should ever be told now of the sordid compact that Raymond had put before her during that memorable walk by the side of the Aven. She would simply erase the hateful record from her mind; but she could not close her eyes to the certain fact that Raymond's daring project had shriveled into nothingness because he saw that, no matter what the consequences, Mrs. Carmac's daughter would never marry a common thief. That phase had passed like the stupor of a nightmare. The vital problem presented by her mother's future remained insoluble as ever.