"You need resent nothing, Maitre Fille," interrupted the Big Financier,
not unkindly. "What I have said has been said to his friend and the
friend of my own great friend, Judge Carcasson; and I am only anxious
that he should be warned by someone whose opinions count with him; whom
he can trust--"

"But, monsieur, alas!" broke in the Clerk of the Court, "that is the
trouble; he does not select those he can trust. He is too confiding.
He believes those who flatter him, who impose on his good heart.
It has always been so."

"I judge it is so still in the case of Monsieur Dolores, his daughter's
grandfather?" the Big Financier asked quizzically.

"It is so, monsieur," replied M. Fille. "The loss of his daughter shook
him even more than the flight of his wife; and it is as though he could
not live without that scoundrel near him--a vicious man, who makes
trouble wherever he goes. He was a cause of loss to M. Barbille years
ago when he managed the ash-factory; he is very dangerous to women--even
now he is a danger to the future of a young widow" (he meant the widow of
Palass Poucette); "and he has caused a scandal by perjury as a witness,
and by the consequences--but I need not speak of that here. He will do
Jean Jacques great harm in the end, of that I am sure. The very day
Mademoiselle Zoe left the Manor Cartier to marry the English actor, Jean
Jacques took that Spanish bad-lot to his home; and there he stays, and
the old friends go--the old friends go; and he does not seem to miss
them."

There was something like a sob in M. Fille's voice. He had loved Zoe
in a way that in a mother would have meant martyrdom, if necessary,