away.
Butterflies did not excite his concern in the least.

M. Ferraud was charmed. He was voluble. Never had he entered a more
homelike place, large enough to be called a chateau, yet as cheerful as
a winter's fire. And the daughter! Her French was the elegant speech
of Tours, her German Hanoverian. Incomparable! And she was not
married? _Helas_! How many luckless fellows walked the world
desolate? And this was M. Fitzgerald the journalist? And M. Breitmann
had also been one? How delighted he was to be here! All this flowed
on with perfect naturalness; there wasn't a false note anywhere. At
dinner he diffused a warmth and geniality which were infectious. Laura
was pleased and amused; and she adored her father for these impulses
which brought to the board, unexpectedly, such men as M. Ferraud.

M. Ferraud did not smoke, but he dissipated to the extent of drinking
three small cups of coffee after dinner.

"You are right," he acknowledged--there had been a slight dispute
relative to the methods of roasting the berry--"Europe does not roast
its coffee, it burns it. The aroma, the bouquet! I am beaten."

"So am I," Fitzgerald reflected sadly, snatching a vision of the girl's
animated face.

Three days he had ridden into the country with her, or played tennis,
or driven down to the village and inspected the yacht. He had been
lonely so long and this beautiful girl was such a good comrade. One
moment he blessed the prospective treasure hunt, another he execrated
it. To be with this girl was to love her; and whither this pleasurable
idleness would lead him he was neither blind nor self-deceiving. But
with the semi-humorous recklessness which was the leaven of his
success, he thrust prudence behind him and stuck to the primrose path.
He had played with fire before, but never had the coals burned so
brightly. He did not say that she was above him; mentally and by birth
they were equals; simply, he was compelled to admit of the truth that
she was beyond him. Money. That was the obstacle. For what man will
live on his wife's bounty? Suppose they found the treasure (and with
his old journalistic suspicion he was still skeptical), and divided it;
why, the interest on his share would not pay for her dresses. To the
ordinary male eye her gowns looked inexpensive, but to him who had
picked up odd bits of information not usually in the pathway of man, to
him there was no secret about it. That bodice and