Over her face crept a pleased look--as if she held some trump card up her sleeve--and one of her cooing, bubbling laughs escaped her lips.
"You are not telling me the truth, you dear Lemois. I am not in love with Gaston, the fisherman, nor are you with our pretty Mignon. Neither you nor I have anything to do with it. Here are two young people whose happiness is trembling in the balance. You hold the scales--that is, you claim to, although the girl is neither your child nor your ward and could marry without your consent, and would if she did not love you for yourself and for all you have done for her. Answer me now--do you object because Gaston is a fisherman?"
Whether her knowledge of Lemois' legal rights--and she had stated them correctly--softened him, or whether he saw a loophole for himself, was not apparent, but the answer came with a certain surrender.
"Yes. It is a dangerous life. You have only to live here, as I have done, to count the women who bid their men good-by and watch in the gray dawn for the boat that never comes back--Mignon's elder brothers in one of them. I do not want her to go through that agony--she is young yet--some one else will come. The first love is not always the last--except in the case of madame"--and he smiled in strange fashion. The bomb was still within reach of his hand, but the fuse had gone out.
"Then it isn't Gaston himself?" she demanded with unflinching gaze.
"No--he is an honest lad; good to his mother; industrious--a brave fellow. He has, too, so I hear, a place in the market--one of the stalls--so he is getting on, and will soon be one of our best citizens." He would talk all night about Gaston, and pleasantly, if she wished.
"Well, if he were a notary? Would that be different?" Her soft brown eyes were hardly visible between their lids, but they were burning with an intense light.
"Yes, it might be." Same air of nonchalance--anything to please the delightful woman.
"Or a chemist?"--just a slit between the lids now, with little flashes along the edges.
"Or a head gardener, perhaps?" Both eyes tight shut under the fluffy gray hair, an intense expression on her face.
"Why not say a minister of state, madame?" laughed Lemois.
"No--no--don't you dare run away like that. Stand to your guns, monsieur. If he were a head gardener, then what?"