Gabriel Druse, with a blur of passion in his voice.
He knew that Felix Marchand had followed his daughter as though he were
a single man.

Fleda saw what was working in his mind. Since her father suspected, he
should know all.

"He almost offered me the big house in Montreal this morning," she said
evenly and coldly.

A malediction broke from the old man's lips.

"He almost thought he wanted me to marry him," Fleda added scornfully.

"And what did you say?" Druse asked.

"There could only be one thing to say. I told him I had never thought of
making my home in a sewer." A grim smile broke over the old man's face,
and he sat down again.

"Because I saw him with you I wanted to warn you," the woman continued.
"Yesterday, I came to warn him of his danger, and he laughed at me. From
Madame Thibadeau I heard he had said he would make you sing his song.
When I came to tell you, there he was with you. But when he left you
I was sure there was no need to speak. Still I felt I must tell
you--perhaps because you are rich and strong, and will stop him from
doing more harm."

"How do you know we are rich?" asked Druse in a rough tone.

"It is what the world says," was the reply. "Is there harm in that? In
any case it was right to tell you all; so that one who had herded with a
woman like me should not be friends with you."

"I have seen worse women than you," murmured the old man.

"What danger did you come to warn M. Marchand about?" asked Fleda.

"To his life," answered the woman.

"Do you want to save his life?" asked the old man.

"Ah, is it not always so?" intervened Madame Bulteel in a low, sad
voice. "To be wronged like that does not make a woman just."

"I am just," answered the woman. "He deserves to die, but I want to save
the man that will kill him when they meet."

"Who will kill him?" asked Fleda. "Dennis--he will kill Marchand if he
can."

The old man leaned forward with puzzled, gloomy interest. "Why? Dennis
left you for another. You say he had grown cold. Was that not what he
wanted--that you should leave him?"

The woman looked at him with tearful eyes. "If I had known Dennis
better, I should have waited. What he did is of the moment only. A man
may fall and rise again, but it is not so with a woman. She thinks and
thinks upon the scar that shows where she wounded herself; and she never
forgets, and so her life becomes nothing--nothing."

No one saw that Madame Bulteel held herself rigidly,