Page:The Van Roon (IA thevanroon00snaiiala).pdf/173



Just at first June was unable to realise that M. Duponnet had not taken the picture away with him. The blood seemed to drum against her brain while she watched Uncle Si turn over the cheque in his long talon fingers and then transfer it to a leather case, which he returned to his breast pocket with a deep sigh. Afterwards he took up the picture from the table on which he had set it down and then June grasped the fact that the treasure was still there.

The face which bent over it now was not that of a happy man. It was a complex of emotions, deep and stern. The price was huge for a thing that had cost him nothing, but—and there it was that the shoe pinched!—if it should prove to be a real Van Roon, he might be parting with it for a song.

June could read his thoughts like an open book. He wanted to eat his cake and have it too. She would have been inclined to pity him had her hatred and her scorn been less. In his cunning and his greed he was a tragic figure, with a thing of incomparable beauty in his hand whose sole effect was to give him the look of an evil bird of prey. Utter rascal as she knew him to be now, she shivered to think how easy it would be for herself to grow just like him. Her very soul was fixed upon the recovery of this wonderful thing which, in the first place, she had obtained by a trick. And did she covet it for its beauty? Or was it for the reason