The Clerk of the Court saw that Jean Jacques had observed the intimate
glances of the two young people, and their eyes met in understanding. It
was just before Zoe had sung so charmingly, 'Oh, Who Will Walk the Wood
With Me'.
At first after Carmen's going Jean Jacques had found it hard to endure
singing in his house. Zoe's trilling was torture to him, though he had
never forbidden her to sing, and she had sung on to her heart's content.
By a subtle instinct, however, and because of the unspoken sorrow in her
own heart, she never sang the songs like 'La Manola'. Never after the day
Carmen went did Zoe speak of her mother to anyone at all. It was worse
than death; it was annihilation, so far as speech was concerned. The
world at large only knew that Carmen Barbille had run away, and that even
Sebastian Dolores her father did not know where she was. The old man had
not heard from her, and he seldom visited at the Manor Cartier or saw his
grand-daughter. His own career of late years had been marked by long
sojourns in Quebec, Montreal and even New York; yet he always came back
to St. Saviour's when he was penniless, and was there started afresh by
Jean Jacques. Some said that Carmen had gone back to Spain, but others
discredited that, for, if she had done so, certainly old Sebastian
Dolores would have gone also. Others continued to insist that she had
gone off with a man; but there was George Masson at Laplatte living
alone, and never going twenty miles away from home, and he was the only
person under suspicion.
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