Ste. Marie caught the boy by the shoulder and spun him round.  “That will do!” he said, sternly.  “You have been a fool; don’t make it worse by being a coward and a cad.  Mlle. O’Hara knew no more of the truth than you knew.  Your uncle lied to you all.”  But the girl came and touched his arm.

She said:  “Don’t be hard with him.  He is bewildered and nervous, and he doesn’t know what he is saying.  Think how sudden it has been for him.  Don’t be hard with him, M. Ste. Marie.”

Ste. Marie dropped his hand, and the lad backed a few steps away.  His face was crimson.  After a moment he said:  “I’m sorry, Coira.  I didn’t mean that.  I didn’t mean it.  I beg your pardon.  I’m about half dippy, I guess.  I—­don’t know what to believe or what to think or what to do.”  He remained staring at her a little while in silence, and presently his eyes sharpened.  He cried out:  “If I should go back there—­mind you, I say ’if’—­d’you know what they’d do?  Well, I’ll tell you.  They’d begin to talk at me one at a time.  They’d get me in a corner and cry over me, and say I was young and didn’t know my mind, and that I owed them something for all that’s happened, and not to bring their gray hairs in sorrow to the grave—­and the long and short of it would be that they’d make me give you up.”  He wheeled upon Ste. Marie.  “That’s what they’d do!” he said, and his voice began to rise again shrilly.  “They’re three to one, and they know they can talk me into anything. You know it, too!” He shook his head.  “I won’t go back!” he cried, wildly.  “That’s what will happen if I do.  I don’t want granddad’s money.  He can give it to old Charlie or to a gendarme if he wants to.  I’m going to have enough of my own.  I won’t go back, and that’s all there is of it.  You may be telling the truth or you may not, but I won’t go.”

Ste. Marie started to speak, but the girl checked him.  She moved closer to where Arthur Benham stood, and she said:  “If your love for me, Arthur, is worth having, it is worth fighting for.  If it is so weak that your family can persuade you out of it, then—­I don’t want it at all, for it would never last.  Arthur, you must go back to them.  I want you to go.”

“I won’t!” the boy cried.  “I won’t go!  I tell you they could talk me out of anything.  You don’t know ’em.  I do.  I can’t stand against them.  I won’t go, and that settles it.  Besides, I’m not so sure that this fellow’s telling the truth.  I’ve known old Charlie a lot longer than I have him.”

Coira O’Hara turned a despairing face over her shoulder toward Ste. Marie.  “Leave me alone with him,” she begged.  “Perhaps I can win him over.  Leave us alone for a little while.”

Ste. Marie hesitated, and in the end went away and left the two together.  He went farther down the park to the rond point, and crossed it to the familiar stone bench at the west side.  He sat down there to wait.  He was anxious and alarmed over this new obstacle, for he had the wit to see that it was a very important one.  It was quite conceivable that the boy, but half-convinced, half-yielding before, would balk altogether when he realized, as evidently he did realize, what returning home might mean to him—­the loss of the girl he hoped to marry.