window--my room faces the
Promenade d'Anglaise. I don't like that fellow."

"I shouldn't let him know," said Jean coolly. "He is very sensitive.
There are so many fellows that you dislike, too."

"I don't think you ought to allow him so much freedom," Marcus Stepney
went on. He was not in an amiable frame of mind, and the knowledge that
he was annoying the girl encouraged him. "If you give these French
chauffeurs an inch they'll take a kilometre."

"I suppose they would," said Jean thoughtfully. "How is your poor hand,
Marcus?"

He growled something under his breath and thrust his hand deep into the
pocket of his reefer coat.

"It is quite well," he snapped, and went back to Monaco and his solitary
boat trip, flaming.

"One of these days ..." he muttered, as he tuned up the motor. He did
not finish his sentence, but sent the nose of the _Jungle Queen_ at full
speed for the open sea.

Jean's talk with Mordon that morning had not been wholly satisfactory.
She had calmed his suspicions to an extent, but he still harped upon the
letter, and she had promised to give it to him that evening.

"My dear," she said, "you are too impulsive--too Gallic. I had a
terrible scene with father last night. He wants me to break off the
engagement; told me what my friends in London would say, and how I
should be a social outcast."

"And you--you, Jean?" he asked.

"I told him that such things did not trouble me," she said, and her lips
drooped sadly. "I know I cannot be happy with anybody but you, Francois,
and I am willing to face the sneers of London, even the hatred and scorn
of my father, for your sake."

He would have seized her hand, though they were in the open road, but
she drew away from him.

"Be careful, Francois," she warned him.

"Remember that you have a very little time to wait."

"I cannot believe my good fortune," he babbled, as he brought the car up
the gentle incline into Monte Carlo. He dodged an early morning tram,
missing an unsuspecting passenger, who had come round the back of the
tram-car, by inches, and set the big Italia up the palm avenue into the
town.

"It is incredible, and yet I always thought some great thing would
happen to me, and, Jean, I have risked so much for you. I would have
killed Madame in London if she had not been dragged out of the way by
that old man, and did I not watch for you when the man Meredith----"

"Hush," she said in a low voice. "Let us talk about something else."