"
M. Fille came forward and took her hand respectfully. "Madame, it is the
first time you have honoured me here. I am very glad to receive you.
Monsieur and Mademoiselle Zoe, they are with you? They will also come in
perhaps?"
M. Fille was courteous and kind, yet he felt that a duty was devolving on
him, imposed by his superior officer, Judge Carcasson, and by his own
conscience, and with courage he faced the field of trouble which his
simple question opened up. George Masson had but now said there had been
nothing 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.
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