"Is this your father, mademoiselle?"
She shook her head.
"That is my mother's fiancé."
He turned to her quickly. "Your mother's fiancé!"
"Yes. My mother has been engaged a long time. She would have been married a year ago but for me."
"Ah, then you don't like it—you don't want her to marry again?"
"I should not care—that is, I should be glad for Jeanne and Louise. Monsieur Berthier is very rich, and he has been kind to the girls. He has offered to give them a home."
Jules came near laughing. It seemed to him ridiculous that the old powdered woman he had seen in the dressing-room of the Circus should marry again.
"Then how have you prevented the marriage?" he asked.
"Because I must work," she replied simply, "and mamma cannot leave me. If mamma married Monsieur Berthier, she would have to stay in Boulogne."