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It had cost Newman some disgust to be forced to assent to Valentin's somewhat cynical interpretation of the old man's philosophy, and, though circumstances seemed to indicate that he had not given himself up to a noble despair, Newman thought it very possible he might be suffering more keenly than was apparent.
Perhaps Mr. de Valentin does not know," I added, turning towards Mrs. Van Reinberg, "that your stepdaughter has done me the honor of promising to be my wife." There was a moment's breathless pause. I saw Mrs. Van Reinberg falter, and I saw something which I did not understand flash across Mr. de Valentin's face.
Newman had been sitting without lights by Valentin's faded fire, upon which he had thrown a log; the blaze played over the richly-encumbered little sitting-room and produced fantastic gleams and shadows.
"Joseph, before returning home I am going to the Rue de Varenne. It is a quarter-past three now, and I must be back by four o'clock. George must hurry the horses." And so in a few moments the lovers came to Valentin's abode. "How glad I am to have seen all this for myself!" Pauline cried, creasing the silken bed-curtains in Raphael's room between her fingers.
She took a cigarette from the little gold case which hung from her chatelaine, and lit it. "I will tell you, Mr. Courage," she said, "why I am rather anxious for you to be present at the meeting to-night. You are altogether disinterested, and you should be able to form a sane opinion of Mr. de Valentin's proposals. I should like to hear how they appeal to you." I bowed.
He got out of the train half an hour before it reached Geneva, in the cold morning twilight, at the station indicated in Valentin's telegram. A drowsy station-master was on the platform with a lantern, and the hood of his overcoat over his head, and near him stood a gentleman who advanced to meet Newman.
Lastly, he was known to be a startling acrobat; despite his huge figure, he could leap like a grasshopper and melt into the tree-tops like a monkey. Hence the great Valentin, when he set out to find Flambeau, was perfectly aware that his adventures would not end when he had found him. But how was he to find him? On this the great Valentin's ideas were still in process of settlement.
The second head, which had been fished from among the river reeds that morning, lay streaming and dripping beside it; Valentin's men were still seeking to recover the rest of this second corpse, which was supposed to be afloat. Father Brown, who did not seem to share O'Brien's sensibilities in the least, went up to the second head and examined it with his blinking care.
The young woman turned her back to the mirror over the chimney-piece, and glanced behind her, to verify Valentin's assertion. The mirror descended low, and yet it reflected nothing but a large unclad flesh surface. The young marquise put her hands behind her and gave a downward pull to the waist of her dress. "Like that, you mean?" she asked.
There was one thing which Flambeau, with all his dexterity of disguise, could not cover, and that was his singular height. If Valentin's quick eye had caught a tall apple-woman, a tall grenadier, or even a tolerably tall duchess, he might have arrested them on the spot. But all along his train there was nobody that could be a disguised Flambeau, any more than a cat could be a disguised giraffe.
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