"Lots!" cried Tollemache. "First, let's get down to bedrock--then we can talk plainly. I've never said a word to you, Ingersoll, and mighty little to your daughter; but I love Yvonne, and if she will marry me, our wedding day will be the proudest day of my life. I'm not a poor man. I've a heap more money than ever I've owned up to, because I like the life here, and I like you, and I worship the ground Yvonne walks on, and I was afraid that if you knew I was fairly well fixed in a financial sense you'd regard me as a _poseur_, and cut me out. Why, I've saved nearly ten thousand dollars a year since I came to Pont Aven! I can lay my hands tomorrow on a hundred thousand, and still have enough left to keep Yvonne in pretty good shape.
"Now I'm not making any bargain with you. That isn't our way. But if I am given a free hand with Raymond, I'll settle his hash in double quick time. Swine of his variety are always blackmailers. Very well! I'll pay his price. He must clear out, bag and baggage, giving me the promise of his silence, over and above an acknowledgment that he obtained the money by threatening to expose Mrs. Carmac. Don't imagine he won't go! I'll make him! It's rather rotten even to talk of using violence to a fellow with a broken arm; but he must be got rid of, and I'll frighten him into a deal--see if I don't!"
Ingersoll rose, and caught the younger man's hand in an impulsive grip. "Lorry," he said, "if it pleases Providence to ordain that Yvonne shall marry you, I'll offer thanks on my knees. You are honest as the sun, and transparent as the Aven beneath the trees of the Bois d'Amour in summer. I have known your story for years. I had hardly learned your name before a man told me of the quarrel with your father because you refused to fall in with some marriage brokerage arranged between him and the father of a girl whose business interests marched with his. I knew too that you bought ten of my pictures during the first six months of our acquaintance. I didn't interfere with your well meaning subterfuge. You have lost nothing on that speculation, at any rate, because you acquired my work at its best period, and your investment would yield two hundred per cent. if you sold now.