Her life is but fits and starts. Yet she has a good head
for business, yes, very good. She can see through things. Still, there
it is--she will not hold fast from day to day."
"Yes, yes, but where did she come from? What was the field where she
grew?"
"To be sure, monsieur. It was like this," responded the other.
Thereupon M. Fille proceeded to tell the history, musical with legend,
of Jean Jacques' Grand Tour, of the wreck of the Antoine, of the marriage
of the "seigneur," the home-coming, and the life that followed, so far as
rumour, observation, and a mind with a gift for narrative, which was not
to be incomplete for lack of imagination, could make it. It was only
when he offered his own reflections on Carmen Dolores, now Carmen
Barbille, and on women generally, that Judge Carcasson pulled him up.
"So, so, I see. She has temperament and so on, but she's unsteady,
and regarded by her neighbours not quite as one that belongs. Bah,
the conceit of every race! They are all the same. The English are the
worst--as though the good God was English. But the child--so beautiful,
you say, and yet more like the father than the mother.
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