“What things?” she mocked somberly.

“I don’t know, yet,” he admitted, “But I do know there is always a way out of everything except the grave.  The thing is to find the right way.  That’s up to the Padre and me.  Parson, would you mind going after Madame now, please?  The sooner we go the better.”

Have I not said my mother is the most wonderful of women?  I waked her in the small hours with the startling information that Mary Virginia was downstairs in John Flint’s workroom, and that she herself must dress and accompany her home.  And my mother, though she looked her stark bewilderment, plagued me with no questions.

“She is in great trouble, and she needs you.  Hurry.”

Madame slid out of her bed and reached for her neatly folded garments.

“Wait in the hall, Armand; I will be with you in ten minutes.”  And she was, wrapped and hatted.

Once in the workroom, she cast a deep and searching woman-glance at the pale girl in the chair.  Her face was so sweet with motherliness and love and pity, and that profound comprehension the best women show to each other, that I felt my throat contract.  Gathered into Madame’s embrace, Mary Virginia clung to her old friend dumbly.  Madame had but one question: 

“My child, have you told John Flint and my son what this trouble of yours is?”

“Yes; I had to, I had to!”

“Thank the good God for that!” said my mother piously.  “Now we will go home, dearest, and you can sleep in peace—­you have nothing more to worry about!”

The clasp of the comforting arms, the sweet serenity of the mild eyes, and above all the little lady’s perfect confidence, aroused Mary Virginia out of her torpor.  She felt that she no longer stood alone at the mercy of the merciless.  Bundled in the wraps my mother had provided, she paused at the door.

“I think you will forgive me any trouble I may cause you, because I am sure all of you love me.  And whatever comes, I will be brave enough to face and to bear it.  Padre, dear Padre, you understand, don’t you?”

“My child, my darling child, I understand.”

“I’ll be back in half an hour, parson,” the Butterfly Man remarked meaningly.  Then the three melted into the night.

Left alone, I was far from sharing Madame’s simple faith in our ability to untangle this miserable snarl.  I knew now the temper of the men we had to deal with.  I also understood that in cases like this the Southern trigger-finger is none too steady.  Seen from a certain point of view, if ever men deserved an unconditional and thorough killing, these two did.  Yet this homicidal specter turned me cold, for Mary Virginia’s sake.

For Eustis himself I could see nothing but ruin ahead, but I wished passionately to help the dear girl who had come to me in her stress.  But what was one to do?  How should one act?

I sat there dismally enough, my chin sunk upon my breast; for as a plotter, a planner, a conspirator, I am a particularly hopeless failure.  I have no sense of intrigue, and the bare idea of plotting reduces me to stupefaction.