"_Seem_ to pay. Looking so simple, so ordinary, 'twas but a mask for
something else."
"But in a thing looking so ordinary had he no competitors, to make
profits difficult?"
"Ah, of a kind, yes; but the men who could do that best would not do it
at all. They would not have been respected."
"But T. Chapdelaine & Son were respected."
"Yes, _in spite_ of that. Their friends said: 'Let the extremists be
extreme that way.'"
"The public mind was not yet quite in flames."
"No. But--guess who helped _grandpère_ do that."
"Why, do I know him? Castanado."
The girl shook her head.
"Who? Beloiseau?"
"Ah, you! You can guess better."
"Ovide Lan'--no, Ovide was still a slave."
"Yet more free than most free negroes. 'Twas he. He was janitor to
offices in the hotel, and always making acquaintance with the slaves of
the slave-mart. And when he found one who was quite of the right
kind--and Ovide he's a wise judge of men, you know--he would show him
to _grandpère_, and at the auction, if the bidding was low, _grandpère_
would buy him--or her."
"What was one of 'quite the right kind'? One willing to buy his own
freedom?"
"Ah, also to do something more; you see?"
"Yes, I see," Chester laughed; "to help others run away, wasn't it?"
"Not precisely to run, but----"
"To stow away, on those ships, h'm?" There was rapture in crossing that
_h'm_ line of intimacy. "I see it all! Ha-ha, I see it all! Well!
that brings us back to 'Maud,' doesn't it--h'm?"
"Yes. They met, she and grandpère, at a ball, in the hotel.
But"--Aline smiled--"that was not their first. Their first was two or
three mornings before, when he, passing in Royal Street, and she--with
Sidney--looking at old buildings in Conti Street----"
"Mademoiselle! That happened to _them_?--_there_?"
"Yes, to _them_, _there_." With level gaze narrator and listener
regarded each other. Then they glanced at Cupid. His eyes were
shining on them.
"Who is our young friend, anyhow?" asked Chester.
"Ah, I suppose you have guessed. He is the grandson of Sidney."