“Her Highness has offered you five millions for slips of paper worth no more than the ink which decorates them.”
“And I have refused. Why? Simply because the matter does not rest with me. You have proceeded with a high hand, Madame, or rather your duchess has. Nothing will come of it. Had there been any possibility of my considering your proposals, this kidnaping would have destroyed it.”
She smiled. Maurice saw the smile and stopped whistling long enough to scratch his chin, which was somewhat in need of a razor. He had seen many women smile that way. He had learned to read it. It was an inarticulate “perhaps.”
“Is Madame the duchess,” Fitzgerald completed. “I haven't the slightest doubt of that. One way or the other, it does not concern me. I came here simply to fulfill the wishes of my father; and my word, Madame, fulfill them I shall. You are holding me a prisoner, but uselessly. On the twentieth the certificates fall due against the government. If they are not presented either for renewal or collection, the bankruptcy scheme of your duchess will fall through just the same. I will tell you the truth, Madame. My father never expected to collect the moneys so long as Leopold sat on the throne.”
“This officer here,” continued Fitzgerald, while the Colonel made a comical grimace, “suggests violence. I shall save him the trouble. I have seen much of the world, Madame--the hard side of it--and, knowing it as I do, it is scarcely probable that I should carry about my person the equivalent of four millions of crowns.”
“Well, Madame,” said the Colonel, pushing his belt closer about his hips, as a soldier always does when he is on the point of departure, “what he says is true, every word of it. I see nothing more to do at present.”
Mademoiselle of the Veil was paying not so much attention to the Colonel's words as she was to Maurice's whistle.
“Monsieur,” she said, coldly, “have you no other tune in your repertory?”
“Pardon me!” exclaimed Maurice. “I did not intend to annoy you.” He stepped down out of the window.
“You do not annoy me; only the tune grows rather monotonous.”
“I will whistle anything you may suggest,” he volunteered.
She did not respond to this flippancy, though the pupils of her gray eyes grew large with anger. She walked the length of the room and back.