t have the honour.
His talk is quite spacious and lofty at times, as you know."

"So--that is so, monsieur... Mademoiselle Zoe's room is always ready for
her. At time of Noel he sent cards to all the families of the parish who
had been his friends, as from his daughter and himself; and when people
came to visit at the Manor on New Year's Day, he said to each and all
that his daughter regretted she could not arrive in time from the
West to receive them; but that next year she would certainly have the
pleasure."

"Like the light in the window for the unreturning sailor," somewhat
cynically remarked the Big Financier. "Did many come to the Manor on
that New Year's Day?"

"But yes, many, monsieur. Some came from kindness, and some because they
were curious--"

"And Monsieur Dolores?"

The lips of the Clerk of the Court curled, "He went about with a manner
as soft as that of a young cure. Butter would not melt in his mouth.
Some of the women were sorry for him, until they knew he had given one
of Jean Jacques' best bear-skin rugs to Madame Palass Poucette for a New
Year's gift."

The Big Financier laughed cheerfully. "It's an old way to
popularity--being generous with other people's money. That is why I am
here. The people that spend your Jean Jacques' money will be spending
mine too, if I don't take care."

M. Fille noted the hard look which now settled in M. Mornay's face, and
it disturbed him. He rose and leaned over the table towards his visitor
anxiously.

"Tell me, if you please, monsieur, is there any real and immediate
danger of the financial collapse of Jean Jacques?"

The other regarded M. Fille with a look of consideration. He liked this
Clerk of the Court, but he liked Jean Jacques for the matter of that,
and away now from the big financial arena where he usually worked, his
natural instincts had play. He had come to St. Saviour's with a bigger
thing in his mind than Jean Jacques and his affairs; he had come on the
matter of a railway, and had taken Jean Jacques on the way, as it were.
The scheme for the railway looked very promising to him, and he was in
good humour; so that all he said about Jean Jacques was free from that
general irritation of spirit which has sacrificed many a small man on
a big man's altar. He saw the agitation he had caused, and he almost
repented of what he had already said; yet he had acted with a view to
getting M. Fille to warn Jean Jacques.

"I repeat what I said," he now