foster-child.

"He had, indeed, ever the grasping hand," she said, "therefore I had
thought he would have married lands wide and rich with some dwarfish
bride, or else a merchant's daughter of Barcelona, whose Peruvian
dollars needed the gilding of his nobility. But Claire--and she is his
cousin too----!"

"Also no Catholic--nor ever will be!" interrupted Claire hotly.

The old lady sighed. This was a sore subject with her. Had she not
spent three reals every week in candles at the shrine of the Virgin in
the Church of Collioure, sending down the money by one of her maidens,
all to give effect to her prayers for the conversion of her guest? For
Donna Amelie believed, as every Spanish woman does in her heart believe,
that out of the fold of the Church is no salvation.

"Ah, well," she murmured on this occasion, "that was your father's
teaching--on him be the sin."

For dying unconfessed, as Francis Agnew had done, she thought a little
more would not matter.

"I have been too long away to guess his meaning, maybe," said the
Professor at last; "for me--I would give--well, no matter--he is not the
man, as I read him, to fall honestly in love even with the fairest girl
that lives----!"

"You are not polite," said Claire defiantly; "surely the man may like me
for myself as well as another? Allow him that, at least!"

But the Professor only put out his hand as if to quiet a fretting child.
It was a serious question, that which was before them to settle. They
must work it out with slow masculine persistence.

"Wait a little, Claire," he said tenderly; "what say my brothers?" The
Alcalde in turn shook his head more gravely than usual.

"No," he said, "there is something rascally at the back of Don Raphael's
brain. I will wager that he knew of his cousin being here the first
night he came to La Masane!"

"I have it," cried Don Jordy; "I remember there was something in his
grandfather's will (yours, too, my pretty lady!) about a portion to be
laid aside for his daughter Colette. I have seen a copy of the deed in
the episcopal registry. It was very properly drawn by one of my
predecessors. Now, old Don Emmanuel-Stephane Llorient lived so long that
all his sons died or got themselves killed before him--it never was a
hard matter to pick a quarrel with a Llorient of Collioure. So this
grandson Raphael had his grandfather's estates to play ducks and drakes
with----"

"More ducks than drakes," put in the sententious mill