She noticed that his face now seemed pale. The bones of the cheeks stood out more now. He showed more gravity. Freed of his red fighting flush, the, flame of passion gone out of his eyes, he seemed more dignified, more of a man than had hitherto been apparent to her.
"Non! Non!" cried out Jeanne, who had benefited unnoticed to an extent undreamed hitherto in her experience in matter delicate between man and maid. Her mistress raised a hand. She herself had almost forgotten that Jeanne was in the room. "Non! Non!" reiterated that young person. "Eet was no neegaire child, pas de tout, jamais de la vie! I know those neegaire voice. It was a voice white, Madame, Monsieur! Apparently it wept. Perhaps it had hunger."
A sort of grim uncovering of his teeth was Dunwody's smile. He made no comment. His face was whiter than before.
"Whose child was it?" demanded Josephine, motioning to the garments he still held in his hands. "Hers?" He shook his head slowly.
"No."
"Yours?"
"No."
"Oh, well, I suppose it was some servant's—though the overseer, Jeanne says, lives across the fields, there. And there would not be any negroes living here in the house, in any case?"
"No."
"Was it—was it—yours?"