CHAPTER XII. THE MASTER-CARPENTER HAS A PROBLEM

The Clerk of the Court came to his feet with a startled"Merci!" and the master-carpenter fell back with a smothered exclamation.  Both men stared confusedly at the woman as she shut the door slowly and, as it might seem, carefully, before she faced them.

"Here I am, George," she said, her face alive with vital adventure.

His face was instantly swept by a storm of feeling for her, his nature responded to the sound of her voice and the passion of her face.

"Carmen--ah !" he said, and took a step forward, then stopped.  The hoarse feeling in his voice made her eyes flash gratitude and triumph, and she waited for him to take her in his arms; but she suddenly remembered M. Fille.  She turned to him.

"I am sorry to intrude, m'sieu'," she said. "I beg your pardon.  They told me at the office of avocat Prideaux that M'sieu' Masson was here. So I came; but be sure I would not interrupt you if there was not cause."

M. Fille came forward and took her hand respectfully. "Madame, it is the first time you have honoured me here.  I am very glad to receive you. Monsieur and Mademoiselle Zoe, they are with you?  They will also come in perhaps?"

M. Fille was courteous and kind, yet he felt that a duty was devolving on him, imposed by his superior officer, Judge Carcasson, and by his own conscience, and with courage he faced the field of trouble which his simple question opened up.  George Masson had but now said there had been nothing more than he himself had seen from the hill behind the Manor; and he had further said, in effect, that all was ended between Carmen Barbille and himself; yet here they were together, when they ought to be a hundred miles apart for many a day.  Besides, there was the look in the woman's face, and that intense look also in the face of the master- carpenter!  The Clerk of the Court, from sheer habit of his profession, watched human faces as other people watch the weather, or the rise or fall in the price of wheat and potatoes.  He was an archaic little official, and apparently quite unsophisticated; yet there was hidden behind his ascetic face a quiet astuteness which would have been a valuable asset to a worldly-minded and ambitious man.  Besides, affection sharpens the wits.  Through it the hovering, protecting sense becomes instinctive, and prescience takes on uncanny certainty.  He had a real and deep affection for Jean Jacques and his Carmen, and a deeper one still for the child Zoe; and the danger to the home at the Manor Cartier now became again as sharp as the knife of the guillotine.  His eyes ran from the woman to the man, and bac