"And you are trying to return this money to people who gave it to him?"
"He was a villain," said Derrice, with animation.
"A semi-villain. He hoped to return the money."
"Some of those people in the Bible were also villains. Jacob was a sneak, David was a murderer, and Solomon ought to have been shut up in prison."
Her tone was severe, and Justin forbore to answer her.
"Yet God loved them," she went on, reverently. "Justin, how wicked can we be, and yet escape consequences?"
The wind was bitterly cold, and he paused to wrap her cloak more closely about her before answering. "We must not consider that question. One can love and serve God, fall into sin, and repent. Our finite minds cannot take in the depths of his compassion."
"It is not for me to judge him, but if he did, we received no word of it. His attitude was that of an injured man, and when he died, after a few years of exile, he left us his body as a precious legacy. We had him brought home and buried, and I hope his soul is with God."
"Curious," said the girl, under her breath. "Justin, are we all links in a chain? I must walk to-night to help pay the debts of a man I never saw."
"You shall not walk if you had rather drive."
"Hush, my husband, and put up your hand to stop that car."
Not many minutes later they were walking briskly up the avenue leading to French Cross. The old château was brilliantly lighted. Miss Gastonguay loved to entertain the people who pleased her, and Prosperity, throwing the door wide open to Derrice and her husband, begged them to walk up-stairs, where his brother Tribulation smilingly assigned them to respective dressing-rooms, and presented Derrice with a loosely tied bunch of carnations.
Derrice, in secret amusement, was obliged to summon her husband to her assistance, in arranging a refractory ruffle.
"Why is it," she whispered as he gropingly tried to fasten a pin over one of her smooth shoulder-blades, "that one sees no women servants about this house?"
"Because," he whispered back, "Miss Gastonguay is a rabid champion for men. She says one hears nothing but arrangements for women's homes and asylums, and women's work of all kinds, and she believes in looking out for some of the neglected ones."