thing more than he himself had seen from the hill behind the Manor;
and he had further said, in effect, that all was ended between Carmen
Barbille and himself; yet here they were together, when they ought to be
a hundred miles apart for many a day. Besides, there was the look in
the woman's face, and that intense look also in the face of the
master-carpenter! The Clerk of the Court, from sheer habit of his
profession, watched human faces as other people watch the weather, or
the rise or fall in the price of wheat and potatoes. He was an archaic
little official, and apparently quite unsophisticated; yet there was
hidden behind his ascetic face a quiet astuteness which would have
been a valuable asset to a worldly-minded and ambitious man. Besides,
affection sharpens the wits. Through it the hovering, protecting sense
becomes instinctive, and prescience takes on uncanny certainty. He had
a real and deep affection for Jean Jacques and his Carmen, and a deeper
one still for the child Zoe; and the danger to the home at the Manor
Cartier now became again as sharp as the knife of the guillotine. His
eyes ran from the woman to the man, and back again, and then with great
courage he repeated his question:

"Monsieur and mademoiselle, they are well--they are with you, I hope,
madame?"

She looked at him in the eyes without flinching, and on the instant she
was aware that he knew all, and that there had been talk with George
Masson. She knew the little man to be as good as ever can be, but she
resented the fact that he knew. It was clear George Masson had told
him--else how could he know; unless, perhaps, all the world knew!

"You know well enough that I have come alone, my friend," she answered.
"It is no place for Zoe; and it is no place for my husband and him
together," she made a motion of the head towards the mastercarpenter.
"Santa Maria, you know it very well indeed!"

The Clerk of the Court bowed, but made no reply. What was there to say
to a remark like that! It was clear that the problem must be worked out
alone between these two people, though he was not quite sure what the
problem was. The man had said the thing was over; but the woman had
come, and the look of both showed that it was not all over.

What would the man do? What was it the woman wished to do? The
master-carpenter had said that Jean Jacques had spared him, and meant to
forgive his wife. No doubt he had done so, for Jean Jacques was a man
of sentiment