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"Ah, my Quantrelle!" he cried, gayly, at sight of the thin grotesqueness. "Still in your old place; still taking care of madame!" "Till the end," was the answer, with a serious note in the voice. "You have not changed much in the three years since I saw you last," Dermott said, inspecting him closely. "Nor you, monsieur," Quantrelle answered.
On the morning of Dermott's coming, Quantrelle the Red sat in his little house peering out, monkeylike, expectantly, at the passers-by, and craning his long neck to keep a constant eye on the corner around which the Irishman was to arrive. As the brougham drew up to the curb the Red One sprang to his feet, threw the iron doors wide apart, and stood bowing double as McDermott entered.
Always the blacks and grays and very elegant! They are not my colors," he drew himself to his straightest to exhibit his maroon coat and trousers and wide green cravat with an assumed satisfaction; "but each has his own style," he finished. McDermott laughed. "You are sober, Quantrelle!" "Distressingly so, monsieur!" "And if I give you money you would use it for " McDermott paused.
In it I found a letter from him, saying that it could be proven that my father had never made an early marriage, and that Quantrelle was a great liar. I don't understand it. I saw Quantrelle myself, as well as his brother, when I was in France. There is not a doubt the marriage was an entirely legal one, not the shadow of a doubt. Ah," he cried, "Katrine, it seems to kill me when I think of it!"
"God forgive me!" he cried, as he sat down to write the following letter: DEAR RAVENEL, You will remember, I said in my last interview that the matter upon which we spoke could not be fully proven until I received further letters from France. They have come, and I hasten to write you that the marriage we spoke of was not a legal one, the witness, Quantrelle Le Rouge, being a great liar.
It was in this visit, as Frank stood well in the sunshine admiring the old house, that Quantrelle, peering from his box, saw him, and with an oath fell back into the shadow as though hiding from an enemy.
He added to his charms an attire intentionally bizarre, for he dressed himself, so to speak, in character. And with these natural and achieved drawbacks to his appearance he had the temper of a wasp, so that it was small wonder that questionings were rife as to the reason of his retention, his overpaid retention, in the De Nemours' household. He had a wit of his own, had Quantrelle.
"Charity, monsieur," the Red One answered, his eyes drooped religiously. He took the gold coin which Dermott gave him, tossed it into the sunshine, and slipped it into his pocket with a bow. "You will notice, I honor your integrity by not biting it to see if it be counterfeit." "Knowing your character, it is indeed a compliment," McDermott said. "Au revoir, my Quantrelle!"
"After my baby came," Madame de Nemours continued, "I was alone with poverty and ill health, and for two years, two years," she repeated, impressively, "Quantrelle, a long, thin-legged, red-haired boy, kept me alive with the money he could earn and the scant assistance his mother could lend him.
On the right of the entrance, in a kind of sentry-box, Quantrelle the Red acted as concierge. He was a man above the peasant class, ridiculously long and spare, with an unbroken record for thirty years of drunkenness and quarrelling.
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