Marie, but she shook her head, smiling down upon him.
"No, not you, my dear. Politics least of all. You could be a soldier, if you chose. You could fight as your father and your grandfather and the others of your house have done. You could lead a forlorn hope in the field. You could suffer and starve and go on fighting. You could die splendidly but – politics, no! That wants a tougher shell than you have.
"And a soldier's wife! Of what use to him is she?"
Ste. Marie's face was very grave. He looked up to her smiling.
"Do you set ambition before love, my queen?" he asked, and she did not answer him at once. She looked into his eyes, and she was as grave as he.
"Is love all?" she said at last. "Is love all? Ought one to think of nothing but love when one is settling one's life for ever?
"I wonder?
"I look about me, Ste. Marie," she said, "and in the lives of my friends – the people who seem to me to be most worth while – the people who are making the world's history for good or ill, and it seems to me that in their lives love has the second place – or the third. I wonder if one has the right to set it first.
"There is, of course," she said, "the merely domestic type of woman – the woman who has no thought and no interest beyond her home. I am not that type of woman. Perhaps I wish I were. Certainly they are the happiest. But I was brought up among – well, among important people – men of my grandfather's kind. All my training has been towards that life. Have I the right, I wonder, to give it all up?"
The man stirred at her feet and she put out her hands to him quickly.
"Do I seem brutal?" she cried. "Oh, I don't want to be! Do I seem very ungenerous and wrapped up in my own side of the thing? I don't mean to be that but – I'm not sure. I expect it's that. I'm not sure, and I think I'm a little frightened." She gave him a brief anxious smile that was not without its tenderness.
"I'm so sure," she said, "when I'm away from you. But when you're here – oh, I forget all I've thought of.
"You lay your spell upon me."
Ste. Marie gave a little wordless cry of joy. He caught her two hands in his and held them against his lips. Again that great wave of tenderness swept her – almost engulfing. But when it had ebbed she sank back once more in her chair, and she withdrew her hands from his clasp.
"You make me forget too much," she said. "I think you make me forget everything that I ought to remember. Oh, Ste. Marie, have I any right to think of love and happiness while this terrible mystery is upon us? While we don't know whether poor Arthur is alive or dead? You've seen what it has brought my grandfather to. It is killing him. He has been much worse in the last fortnight. And my mother is hardly a ghost of herself in these days. Ah, it is brutal of me to think of my own affairs – to dream of happiness at such a time." She smiled across at him very sadly.
"You see what you have brought me to!" she said.
Ste. Marie rose to his feet. If Miss Benham, absorbed in that warfare which raged within her, had momentarily forgotten the cloud of sorrow under which her household lay, so much the more had he, to whom the sorrow was less intimate, forgotten it. But he was ever swift to sympathy, Ste. Marie, as quick as a woman and as tender. He could not thrust his love upon the girl at such a time as this. He turned a little away from her and so remained for a moment. When he faced about again the flush had gone from his cheeks and the fire from his eyes. Only tenderness was left there.
"There has been no news at all this week?" he asked, and the girl shook her head.
"None! None! Shall we ever have news of him, I wonder? Must we go on always and never know? It seems to me almost incredible that any one could disappear so completely. And yet, I dare say, many people have done it before and have been as carefully sought for. If only I could believe that he is alive! If only I could believe that!"
"I believe it," said Ste. Marie.
"Ah," she said, "you say that to cheer me. You have no reason to offer."
"Dead bodies very seldom disappear completely," said he. "If your brother died anywhere there would be a record of the death. If he were accidentally killed there would be a record of that too, and, of course, you are having all such records constantly searched?"
"Oh yes," she said. "Yes, of course. At least, I suppose so. My uncle has been directing the search. Of course he would take an obvious precaution like that."
"Naturally," said Ste. Marie. "Your uncle, I should say, is an unusually careful man." He paused a moment to smile.
"He makes his little mistakes, though. I told you about that man O'Hara and about how sure Captain Stewart was that the name was Powers. Do you know – " Ste. Marie had been walking up and down the room, but he halted to face her.
"Do you know, I have a very strong feeling that if one could find this man O'Hara one would learn something about what became of your brother? I have no reason for thinking that, but I feel it."
"Oh," said the girl doubtfully, "I hardly think that could be so. What motive could the man have for harming my brother?"
"None," said Ste. Marie; "but he might have an excellent motive for hiding him away – kidnapping him. Is that the word? Yes, I know, you're going to say that no demand has been made for money, and that is where my argument – if I can call it an argument – is weak. But the fellow may be biding his time. Anyhow, I should like to have five minutes alone with him.
"I'll tell you another thing. It's a trifle and it may be of no consequence, but I add it to my vague and – if you like – foolish feeling and make something out of it. I happened some days ago to meet at the Café de Paris a man who, I knew, used to know this O'Hara. He was not, I think, a friend of his at all, but an acquaintance. I asked him what had become of O'Hara, saying that I hadn't seen him for some weeks. Well, this man said O'Hara had gone away somewhere a couple of months ago. He didn't seem at all surprised, for it appears the Irishman – if he is an Irishman – is decidedly a haphazard sort of person, here to-day, gone to-morrow. No, the man wasn't surprised, but he was rather angry, because he said O'Hara owed him some money. I said I thought he must be mistaken about the fellow's absence, because I'd seen him in the street within the month – on the evening of our dinner party you remember – but this man was very sure that I had made a mistake. He said that if O'Hara had been in town he was sure to have known it.
"Well, the point is here. Your brother disappears at a certain time. At the same time this Irish adventurer disappears too, and your brother was known to have frequented the Irishman's company. It may be only a coincidence, but I can't help feeling that there's something in it."
Miss Benham was sitting up straight in her chair with a little alert frown.
"Have you spoken of this to my uncle?" she demanded.
"Well – no," said Ste. Marie. "Not the latter part of it; that is, not my having heard of O'Hara's disappearance. In the first place, I learnt of that only three days ago and I have not seen Captain Stewart since – I rather expected to find him here to-day; and in the second place I was quite sure that he would only laugh. He has laughed at me two or three times for suggesting that this Irishman might know something. Captain Stewart is – not easy to convince, you know."
"I know," she said, looking away. "He's always very certain that he's right. Well, perhaps he is right. Who knows?"
She gave a little sob.
"Oh!"
