And this whimsical turn caused even the admiral to struggle with a smile.  He was a square, generous old sailor.  He stretched his hand across the table.  M. Ferraud took it, but with a shade of doubt.

“You are a good man, Mr. Ferraud.  I’m terribly disappointed.  All my life I have been goose-chasing for treasures, and this one I had set my heart on.  You’ve gone about it the best you could.  If you had told me from the start there wouldn’t have been any fun.”

“That is it,” eagerly assented M. Ferraud.  “Why should I spoil your innocent pleasure?  For a month you have lived in a fine adventure, and no harm has befallen.  And when you return to America, you will have an unrivaled story to tell; but, I do not think you will ever tell all of it.  He will have paid in wretchedness and humiliation for his inheritance.  And who has a better right to it?  Every coin may represent a sacrifice, a deprivation, and those who gave it freely, gave it to the blood.  Is it sometimes that you laugh at French sentiment?”

“Not in Frenchmen like you,” said the admiral gravely.

“Good!  To men of heart what matters the tongue?”

“Poor young man!” sighed Laura.  “I am glad he has found it.  Didn’t I wish him to have it?”

“And you knew all this?” said Cathewe into the ear of the woman he loved.

Thinly the word came through her lips:  “Yes.”

Cathewe’s chin sank into his collar and he stared at the crumbs on the cloth.

“But what meant this argument with the drivers?” asked Coldfield.

“Yes!  I had forgotten that,” supplemented the sailor.

“On the way back to Carghese, we should have been stopped.  We were to be quietly but effectively suppressed till our Napoleon set sail for Marseilles.”  M. Ferraud bowed.  He had no more to add.

The admiral shook his head.  He had come to Corsica as one might go to a picnic; and here he had almost toppled over into a gulf!

The significance of the swift glance which was exchanged between M. Ferraud and Fitzgerald was not translatable to Laura, who alone caught it in its transit.  An idea took possession of her, but this idea had nothing to do with the glance, which she forgot almost instantly.  Woman has a way with a man; she leads him whither she desires, and never is he any the wiser.  She will throw obstacles in his way, or she will tear down walls that rise up before him; she will make a mile out of a rod, or turn a mountain into a mole-hill:  and none but the Cumaean Sibyl could tell why.  And as Laura was of the disposition to walk down by the cemetery, to take a final view of the sea before it melted into the sky, what was more natural than that Fitzgerald should follow her?  They walked on in the peace of twilight, unmindful of the curiosity of the villagers or of the play of children about their feet.  The two were strangely silent; but to him it seemed that she must presently hear the thunder of his insurgent heart.  At length she paused, gazing toward the sea upon which the purples of night were rapidly deepening.