Aleck Van Camp stayed at home, keeping a dog-watch on Mélanie and Madame Reynier, whether they were at the Hillside or at the old red house. Now that the purposes of the Frenchman had been made clear, and since he was still at large, the world was no safe place for unattended women. Aleck pondered deeply over the situation.
"Is your amiable cousin's henchman a man to be scared off by our recent little encounter, do you think?" he asked of Mélanie.
She considered. "He might be scared, easily enough. But I know well that he has a contempt for the usual machinery of the law. He has evaded it so many times that he thinks it an easy matter."
Aleck smiled whimsically. "I don't wonder at that, if he has had many experiences like the last."
"Ah, so! But how much rope would the duke give him, do you think, on a pinch?"
"All the rope he cares to take. Stephen's protection is all-powerful in Krolvetz; and elsewhere Chatelard depends, as I have said, on his wits."
"But there must be some limit to the duke's stretch of conscience!"
Mélanie's eyes took on their far-away look. "Perhaps there is," she said at last, "but who can guess where that limit is? Besides, all he asks of his henchmen is results. He never inquires as to methods."
"Well, what do you think is the exact result Duke Stephen wants, in this case?"
"He wants me either to return to Krolvetz and marry his brother, or--"
"Or to disappear so completely that there will be no question of my return. You see, it's a peculiar case. If I marry without his consent--"
"Which you are about to do--" cut in Aleck.
"I simply forfeit my estates and they go into the public treasury, where they will be strictly accounted for. But if I marry Lorenzo--"
"Then the money goes into the family, of course, as my dot. Or--or, if I should die--in that case Stephen inherits the money. And there is no doubt but that Stephen needs money."
Aleck pondered for several minutes, while grave shadows threatened his face. But presently his smiling, unquenchable good temper came to the surface, and he gleefully tucked Mélanie's hand under his arm.
"As I said before, you need a husband very badly."
The result of Aleck's moment of grave thought came a few days later, with the arrival of two quietly-dressed, unostentatious men. He told Mélanie that one man was her chauffeur for the white machine, and the other was an extra hand he had engaged for the return trip on the _Sea Gull_. The chauffeur, however, for one reason or another, rarely took the wheel, and could have been seen walking at a distance behind Mélanie whenever she stirred abroad. The extra hand for the _Sea Gull_ did just the same as the chauffeur.