murdered, and then the lawyer came on the scene. He lived with her for a
year. She had a child by him. One day he sent the child away to a safe
place and told her he was going to turn over a new leaf--he was going to
stand for Parliament, and she must go. She wouldn't go without the
child. At last he said the child was dead; and showed her the
certificate of death. Then she came back here, and for a while, alas!
she disgraced the parish. But all at once she changed--she got a message
that her child was alive. To her it was like being born again. It was
at this time they were going to drive her from the parish. But the
Seigneur and then the Cure spoke for her, and so did I--at last."

He paused and plaintively admired himself in the mirror. He was grateful
that he had been clean-shaved that morning, and he was content to catch
the citrine odour of the bergamot upon his hair.

New phases of the most interesting case Charley had ever defended spread
out before him--the case which had given him his friend Jo Portugais,
which had turned his own destiny. Yet he could not quite trace in it the
vital association of this vain Notary now in the confessional mood.

"You behaved very well," said Charley tentatively.

"Ah, you say that, knowing so little! What will you say when you know
all--ah! That I should take a stand also was important. Neither the
Seigneur nor the Cure was married; I was. I have been long-suffering for
a cause. My marital felicity has been bruised--bruised--but not broken."

"There are the twins," said Charley, with a half-closed eye.

"Could woman ask greater proof?" urged the Notary seriously, for the