Erect and grotesque De Ferrieres retained the same attitude until the sound of her footsteps was lost, when he slowly began to close the door.  But a strong arm arrested it from without, and a large carpeted foot appeared at the bottom of the narrowing opening.  The door yielded, and Mr. Abner Nott entered the room.

IV.

With an exclamation and a hurried glance around him, De Ferrieres threw himself before the intruder.  But slowly lifting his large hand, and placing it on his lodger’s breast, he quietly overbore the sick man’s feeble resistance with an impact of power that seemed almost as moral as it was physical.  He did not appear to take any notice of the room or its miserable surroundings; indeed, scarcely of the occupant.  Still pushing him, with abstracted eyes and immobile face, to the chair that Rosey had just quitted, he made him sit down, and then took up his own position on the pile of cushions opposite.  His usually underdone complexion was of watery blueness; but his dull, abstracted glance appeared to exercise a certain dumb, narcotic fascination on his lodger.

“I mout,” said Nott, slowly, “hev laid ye out here on sight, without enny warnin’, or dropped ye in yer tracks in Montgomery Street, wherever there was room to work a six-shooter in comf’ably?  Johnson, of Petaluny—­him, ye know, ez hed a game eye—­fetched Flynn comin’ outer meetin’ one Sunday, and it was only on account of his wife, and she a second-hand one, so to speak.  There was Walker, of Contra Costa, plugged that young Sacramento chap, whose name I disremember, full o’ holes jest ez he was sayin’ ‘Good-by’ to his darter.  I mout hev done all this if it had settled things to please me.  For while you and Flynn and that Sacramento chap ez all about the same sort o’ men, Rosey’s a different kind from their sort o’ women.”

“Mademoiselle is an angel!” said De Ferrieres, suddenly rising, with an excess of extravagance.  “A saint!  Look!  I cram the lie, ha! down his throat who challenges it.”

“Ef by mam’selle ye mean my Rosey,” said Nott, quietly laying his powerful hands on De Ferrieres’ shoulders, and slowly pinning him down again upon his chair, “ye’re about right, though she ain’t mam’selle yet.  Ez I was sayin’, I might hev killed you off-hand ef I hed thought it would hev been a good thing for Rosey.”

“For, her?  Ah, well!  Look, I am ready,” interrupted De Ferrieres, again springing to his feet, and throwing open his coat with both hands.  “See! here at my heart—­fire!”

“Ez I was sayin’,” continued Nott, once more pressing the excited man down in his chair, “I might hev wiped ye out—­and mebbee ye wouldn’t hev keered—­or you might hev wiped me out, and I mout hev said.  ‘Thank’ee,’ but I reckon this ain’t a case for what’s comfable for you and me.  It’s what’s good for Rosey.  And the thing to kalkilate is, what’s to be done.”