What sinister influence had brought about this change? Could there be any actual foundation for Peridot's vaporings? As he walked back to the hotel through darkened streets he recalled certain vague rumors that had reached his ears in early days. Ingersoll had always posed as a widower; but someone had said that his married life was rather mysterious, since there was no record of his wife's death or place of interment. It would indeed be passing strange if the wreck of the Stella had brought to Pont Aven the woman who was at once Yvonne's mother and the wife of a complete stranger.
Tollemache buttoned the deep collar of an overcoat round his ears as he crossed the river, because the wind was still bitingly cold. He caught a glimpse of Mère Pitou's cottage on the opposite bank of the Aven. There was a light in Yvonne's bedroom. Frankly in love, he threw her a kiss with his fingers.
The action did him, in his own phrase, "a heap of good." After all, such displays of emotion come naturally in France.
"I don't give a red cent who her mother was, or is, or what she has been, or turns out to be," he communed. "It's Yvonne I want. If Yvonne marries me some day, I'll be the happiest man who ever lived, and the most miserable if she doesn't. So there you are, Lorry, my boy! You must make the best of it, whichever way the flag falls."
Memories of peaceful and contented years flitted through Ingersoll's mind while the steam tram lumbered next morning through tiny fields and across rambling lanes to the quay of Concarneau. Other memories, vivid and piercing, came of the period of love and dreams in Paris. Lithe and graceful and divinely beautiful as her daughter was now, Stella Fordyce had been then. An artist to her fingertips, she came to the studio where Ingersoll was working, turning readily to the palette after some slight defect in the vocal cords had put difficulties in the way of an operatic career.
It seemed to be a genuine instance of love at first sight, and they were married within three months of what was practically their first meeting; though Ingersoll had seen her as a girl of fourteen several years earlier. This step was not so foolish as it might have been in the case of two young people without means. Ingersoll had an income of three thousand dollars a year, and complete devotion to art in his student days had enabled him to save a small capital, which he spent on an establishment, and particularly on adorning an exceptionally handsome and attractive wife.