"She will not, I think, be for very long a burden. She is young. She will recover from this shock. She is very pretty, very gentle. If-if no one comes forward whom she loves and who loves her-I-yes, I myself, who was her papa for one night, will be her husband forever."
He laughed inordinately at his own joke; it was a habit of M. Hanaud’s. Then he said gravely:
"But I am glad, M. Ricardo, for Mlle. Celie’s sake that I came to your amusing dinner-party in London."
Mr. Ricardo was silent for a moment. Then he asked:
"And what will happen to the condemned?"
"To the women? Imprisonment for life."
"And to the man?"
Hanaud shrugged his shoulders.
"Perhaps the guillotine. Perhaps New Caledonia. How can I say? I am not the President of the Republic."