Zoe had understood more even at the time of the crisis than they thought
she did, child though she was; and as the years had gone on she had
grasped the meaning of it all more clearly perhaps than anyone at all
except her adored friends Judge Carcasson, at whose home she had visited
in Montreal, and M. Fille.

The thing last rumoured about her mother in the parish was that she had
become an actress. To this Zoe made no protest in her mind. It was
better than many other possibilities, and she fixed her mind on it, so
saving herself from other agonizing speculations. In a fixed imagination
lay safety. In her soul she knew that, no matter what happened, her
mother would never return to the Manor Cartier.

The years had not deepened confidence between father and daughter. A
shadow hung between them. They laughed and talked together, were even
boisterous in their fun sometimes, and yet in the eyes of both was the
forbidden thing--the deserted city into which they could not enter. He
could not speak to the child of the shame of her mother; she could not
speak of that in him which had contributed to that mother's shame--the
neglect which existed to some degree in her own life with him. This was
chiefly so because his enterprises had grown to such a number and height,
that he seemed ever to be counting them, ever struggling to the height,
while none of his ventures ever reached that state of success when it
"ran itself", although as years passed men called him rich, and he spent
and loaned money so freely that they called him the Money Master, or the
Money Man Wise, in deference to his philosophy.

Zoe was not beautiful, but there was a wondrous charm in her deep brown
eyes and in the expression of her pretty, if irregular, features.
Sometimes her face seemed as small as that of a young child, and alive