The Clerk of the Court saw that Jean Jacques had observed the intimate
glances of the two young people, and their eyes met in understanding. It
was just before Zoe had sung so charmingly, 'Oh, Who Will Walk the Wood
With Me'.

At first after Carmen's going Jean Jacques had found it hard to endure
singing in his house. Zoe's trilling was torture to him, though he had
never forbidden her to sing, and she had sung on to her heart's content.
By a subtle instinct, however, and because of the unspoken sorrow in her
own heart, she never sang the songs like 'La Manola'. Never after the
day Carmen went did Zoe speak of her mother to anyone at all. It was
worse than death; it was annihilation, so far as speech was concerned.
The world at large only knew that Carmen Barbille had run away, and that
even Sebastian Dolores her father did not know where she was. The old
man had not heard from her, and he seldom visited at the Manor Cartier or
saw his grand-daughter. His own career of late years had been marked by
long sojourns in Quebec, Montreal and even New York; yet he always came
back to St. Saviour's when he was penniless, and was there started afresh
by Jean Jacques. Some said that Carmen had gone back to Spain, but
others discredited that, for, if she had done so, certainly old Sebastian
Dolores would have gone also. Others continued to insist that she had
gone off with a man; but there was George Masson at Laplatte living
alone, and never going twenty miles away from home, and he was the only
person under suspicion. Others again averred that since her flight
Carmen had become a loose woman in Montreal; but the New Cure came down
on that with a blow which no one was tempted to invite again.

M. Savry's method of punishing was of a kind to make men shrink. If
Carmen Barbille had become a loose woman in Montreal, how did any member
of his flock know that it was the case? What company had he kept in