The Irishman hesitated a moment and then said:—­

“I don’t know why I shouldn’t answer that.  It can’t help you, so far as I can see, to do anything that would hinder us.  You’ll stay until Arthur Benham comes of age, which will be in about two months from now.”

“Yes,” said the other.  “Thanks.  I thought so.  Until young Arthur comes of age and receives his patrimony—­or until old David Stewart dies.  Of course that might happen at any hour.”

The Irishman said:  “I don’t quite see what—­Ah, yes, to be sure!  Yes, I see.  Well, I should count upon eight weeks if I were you.  In eight weeks the boy will be independent of them all, and we shall go to England for the wedding.”

“The wedding?” cried Ste. Marie.  “What wedding?—­Ah!”

“Arthur Benham and my daughter are to be married,” said O’Hara, “so soon as he reaches his majority.  I thought you knew that.”

In a very vague fashion he realized that he had expected it.  And still the definite words came to him with a shock which was like a physical blow, and he turned his back with a man’s natural instinct to hide his feeling.  Certainly that was the logical conclusion to be drawn from known premises.  That was to be the O’Haras’ reward for their labor.  To Stewart the great fortune, to the O’Haras a good marriage for the girl and an assured future.  That was reward enough surely for a few weeks of angling and decoying and luring and lying.  That was what she had meant, on the day before, by saying that she could see all the to-morrows.  He realized that he must have been expecting something like this, but the thought turned him sick, nevertheless.  He could not forget the girl as he had come to know her during the past week.  He could not face with any calmness the thought of her as the adventuress who had lured poor Arthur Benham on to destruction.  It was an impossible thought.  He could have laughed at it in scornful anger, and yet—­What else was she?

He began to realize that his action in turning his back upon the other man in the middle of a conversation must look very odd, and he faced round again trying to drive from his expression the pain and distress which he knew must be there, plain to see.  But he need not have troubled himself, for the other man was standing before the next window and looking out into the morning sunlight, and his hard, bony face had so altered that Ste. Marie stared at him with open amazement.  He thought O’Hara must be ill.

“I want to see her married!” cried the Irishman, suddenly, and it was a new voice, a voice Ste. Marie did not know.  It shook a little with an emotion that sat uncouthly upon this grim, stern man.

“I want to see her married and safe!” he said.  “I want her to be rid of this damnable, roving, cheap existence.  I want her to be rid of me and my rotten friends and my rotten life.”

He chafed his hands together before him, and his tired eyes fixed themselves upon something that he seemed to see out of the window and glared at it fiercely.