ender and went with you to the
grave."

"_Oui_," admitted Etienne, visibly relieved and grasping at this
opportunity. "She's sweet and good. She's play-mamma."

"And her name is Zelie Dionne?" she asked, her face growing white in the
dusk.

"_Oui_, ma'm'selle--she live across in the little house where there are
plant in the window--she live with the good Mother Maillet what I told
you about." He pointed to the cottage. "You go some time and talk with
her--but not now," he added, his fears flaming. He was anxious to be
the first to talk to Zelie Dionne, in order that she might help him to
protect their friend. "You shall talk with her--soon--p'raps. I will
tell her so that she will not be afraid. Yes, you shall hear the
play-mamma say good things of poor Rosemarie."

She bowed and hurried away.

And before her tear-wet eyes the words "play-mamma" danced in letters of
fire. It seemed to be only another sordid story.

But she remembered the face of Walker Farr, and in her heart she
wondered why she still refused to condemn him.

XXVI

THE DRIVEN BARGAIN

The Honorable Daniel Breed, "sipping" his thin lips and propping his
coat-tails on his gaunt fingers, patrolled the lobby of the National
Hotel and his complacency was not a whit disturbed when Richard Dodd
passed in front of him and sneered in his face.

"Keep on practising making up faces," advised the old man, amiably.
"Perhaps in the course of time your uncle will give you a job making up
faces as his understudy, seeing that his physog is getting so tough he
can't manage it very well these days."

Young Dodd whirled on his heel and returned. "We've got a line on you
and your amateur angels, Breed."

"Don't consider me an amateur, do you?" asked the old politician,
smacking his lips complacently.

"You're a has-been."

"Sure thing!" agreed Mr. Breed. "The state committee told me so, and the
state committee never made a mistake."

"We've got so much of a line on your crowd that my uncle has called off
the organizers. There's no need of our wasting money in this campaign.
You're that!" He clacked a finger smartly into his palm.

"Oh yes! You're right! Some snap to us."

"I mean you're nothing."

"Run in and take another drink, sonny," advised Breed, giving slow cant
of his head to denote the baize door through which Dodd had emerged.
"What you have had up to date seems to be making you optimistic--and
there's nothing like being optimistic in