coming up the street. She hastily repeated the groom's news to him.

The Notary stuck his hand between the buttons of his waistcoat. "Well,
well, my dear Madame," he said consequentially, "it is quite true."

"What do you know about it--whose child is it?" she asked, with curdling
scorn.

"'Sh-'sh!" said the Notary. Then, with an oratorical wave of his free
hand: "The Church opens her arms to all--even to her who sinned much
because she loved much, who, through woful years, searched the world for
her child and found it not--hidden away, as it was, by the duplicity of
sinful man"--and so on through tangled sentences, setting forth in broken
terms Paulette Dubois's life.

"How do you know all about it?" asked the saddler. "I've known it for
years," said the Notary grandly--stoutly too, for he would freely risk
his wife's anger that the vain-glory of the moment might be enlarged.

"And you keep it even from madame!" said the saddler, with a smile too
broad to be sarcastic. "Tiens! if I did that, my wife'd pick my eyes
out with a bradawl."

"It was a professional secret," said the Notary, with a desperate resolve
to hold his position.

"I'm going home, Dauphin--are you coming?" questioned his wife, with an
air.

"You will remain, and hear what I've got to say. This Paulette Dubois--