"I don't think--there was about an hour and a half of it. Issy-Ferrault came out of the history box like pepper out of a pot. You'd have thought they made France and that Charlemagne was a bagman. When he was through with his talking, I just put the cinch on him with the remark that he wasn't writing history books but contracts. He pumped me like a tax-gatherer to learn the why and wherefore of it all; but the most I could tell him was that an old friend of Claudine's was determined to see her through and that good hard dollars expressed the measure of his determination. There I left it, and that's what he signed upon. He'll go to Cannes and marry her directly public opinion will let him do it. They are to live in London, I understand. He's a good sportsman and is out after the English shooting and fishing, so I told him to get a house in the shires, and he promised to do so. Claudine's money will tie him up all right--and as for that, I should think a girl with those eyes could hold most men. You may take it, Faber, that the matter is settled--as, of course, it was bound to be--after your generosity." Faber brushed the suggestion aside as one which hardly concerned him. He was pleased by the news and his pride stirred at the suggestion of power, the reality of which he began to understand. Who but a man of vast fortune could have repaired such a tragedy as that? He looked Destiny full in the face and laughed at its omens. "I've bought most things," he said, "but this is my first deal in husbands. Well, I'm glad the little girl is on the road again. Isn't this Issy-Ferrault rather a hustler in his way? I heard him well spoken of when I was in Paris; they say he's an aeroplane on the road or in the air. Do you know of it?" "Oh, there's some talk. He was with Blériot a month or two back. The French army does not sleep much nowadays--a pretty wide-awake lot without any whiskers on their ideas. Issy-Ferrault is one of the aviation detachment. I suppose he'll be flying on his own account now if he can keep out of the arms of that black-eyed little girl. But he won't, if I'm any judge of women. She'll stick like the best glue; she's just the sort." "Then you haven't altered your opinion of her since we left Paris?" "Guess not; nor of your flaxen-haired Venus either. You don't tell me, by the way, what's become of her." "She's gone to London to get married." Bertie opened his eyes very wide. "To get married! Who's the man?" "He's a boy--knocks balls about and considers himself famous. Just one of these British boys, nice voice and manners, and legs like the Moses in the pictures. I don't think you would have named him for her choice in twenty guesses, but there it is. They've been billing and cooing on the Adriatic for a week, and now they've gone to do it in London. They're a difficult proposition, Bertie." Bertie, watching him shrewdly, guessed the same. "Is she in love with him--real?"