that the reason why she could kiss the old Judge and the little Clerk of
the Court, and not kiss, say, the young manager of the great lumber firm
who came every year for a fortnight's fishing at St. Saviour's, was one
which had an understandable cause and was not a mere matter of individual
taste. She had been good friends with this young manager, who was only
thirty years of age, and was married, but when he had wanted to kiss her
on saying good-bye one recent summer, she had said, "Oh, no, oh, no, that
would spoil it all!" Yet when he had asked her why, and what she meant,
she could not tell him. She did not know; but by the end of the first
week after Gerard Fynes had been brought to the Manor Cartier by Louis
Charron, she knew.

She had then been suddenly awakened from mere girlhood. Judge Carcasson
saw the difference in her on a half-hour's visit as he passed westward,
and he had said to M. Fille, "Who is the man, my keeper of the treasure?"
The reply had been of such a sort that the Judge was startled:

"Tut, tut," he had exclaimed, "an actor--an actor once a lawyer! That's
serious. She's at an age--and with a temperament like hers she'll
believe anything, if once her affections are roused. She has a flair for
the romantic, for the thing that's out of reach--the bird on the highest
branch, the bird in the sky beyond ours, the song that was lost before
time was, the light that never was on sea or land. Why, damn it, damn it
all, my Solon, here's the beginning of a case in Court unless we can lay
the fellow by the heels! How long is he here for?"

When M. Fille had told him that he would stay for another month for
certain, and no doubt much longer, if there seemed a prospect of winning
the heiress of the Manor Cartier, the Judge gave a groan.