“Yes; you were always a first favorite with the cure,” said Lacroix.

“How angry he is with Noel McAllister; needlessly so. I have forgiven him long ago.”

“Have you, indeed?  And have you heard about Lady Margaret?”

“Yes.  Mr. McAllister did me the honor of calling on me the other day.”

“Noel McAllister called on you, Marie?”

The old name slipped out accidentally, and, in his excitement, he did not notice the mistake.

“Yes.”

“And he told you about Lady Margaret, about his wife being dead?”

“Yes.”

“Was that all he told you?”

Marie looked rather surprised at being cross-questioned in this abrupt manner; but replied quietly:—­

“No; it was not all.  He told me much more.”

“Yes! yes!” said Lacroix, with the persistency of a cross-examining lawyer, “And you Marie, what did you say?”

“If you really want to know exactly what I said, my words were to the effect that I had no time to reopen a closed chapter in my life, and that my carriage was at the door.”

A strange expression, almost of relief, with surprise mingled, crossed the artist’s grave face, and he did not speak for a moment.  Then he said, slowly, in a tone of half-pitying contempt: 

“Poor McAllister!  What with you and M. Bois-le-Duc, he is not a very enviable person.”

“Then you are sorry for him?”

“Pardon me, I am not.  I have only one feeling towards him, and that would be wiser to keep to myself.  Marie, long ago, at Father Point, I saw it all, though you imagined I was so taken up with my painting and my own affairs.  I knew McAllister was wholly unworthy of the respect and affection you and M. Bois-le-Duc lavished on him.

“I knew him better than either of you, his weakness, his indecision; but it was not for me to warn you, how could I?  Then, Marie, changes came to all of us.  McAllister came into his inheritance; you went to seek your fortune; I to work hard in a merchant’s office in Montreal.  For four years, I labored there at most uncongenial work, but I managed to scrape enough together to pay for my course of study at the school of one of the best masters in Paris.  These years of drudgery in Montreal and Paris were only brightened by one hope—­a hope I scarcely dared acknowledge to myself, so vain did it appear.”

“Yes,” said Marie.  “But you have succeeded, and your hope has been realized.”

“It has not been realized; it is as far from realization as ever.”

“I am astonished to hear you speak in such a way after your brilliant success of yesterday.”