This clue never came, but before she gave up hope of it, the man had got nearer to her than any man had ever done.
After meeting him she awoke to the fact that there was a difference between men, that it was not the same thing to be young as to be old; that the reason why she could kiss the old Judge and the little Clerk of the Court, and not kiss, say, the young manager of the great lumber firm who came every year for a fortnight's fishing at St.Saviour's, was one which had an understandable cause and was not a mere matter of individual taste.

She had been good friends with this young manager, who was only thirty years of age, and was married, but when he had wanted to kiss her on saying good-bye one recent summer, she had said, "Oh, no, oh, no, that would spoil it all!" Yet when he had asked her why, and what she meant, she could not tell him.

She did not know; but by the end of the first week after Gerard Fynes had been brought to the Manor Cartier by Louis Charron, she knew.
She had then been suddenly awakened from mere girlhood.

Judge Carcasson saw the difference in her on a half-hour's visit as he passed westward, and he had said to M.Fille, "Who is the man, my keeper of the treasure ?" The reply had been of such a sort that the Judge was startled: "Tut, tut," he had exclaimed, "an actor--an actor once a lawyer! That's serious.

She's at an age--and with a temperament like hers she'll believe anything, if once her affections are roused.