Father Joseph caught her icy cold hand. "And have you a right to defraud the Church of what is left to it in your trust? Have you thought of the consequences to yourself of such a betrayal?"
Father Latour glanced sternly at his Vicar. "Assez," he said quietly. He took the little hand Father Joseph had released and bent over it, kissing it respectfully. "We must not press this any further. We must leave this to Madame Olivares and her own conscience. I believe, my daughter, you will come to realize that this sacrifice of your vanity would be for your soul's peace. Looking merely at the temporal aspect of the case, you would find poverty hard to bear. You would have to live upon the Olivares's charity, would you not? I do not wish to see this come about. I have a selfish interest; I wish you to be always your charming self and to make a little poésie in life for us here. We have not much of that."
Madame Olivares stopped crying. She raised her head and sat drying her eyes. Suddenly she took hold of one of the buttons on the Bishop's cassock and began twisting it with nervous fingers.
"Father," she said timidly, "what is the youngest I could possibly be, to be Inez's mother?"
The Bishop could not pronounce the verdict; he hesitated, flushed, then passed it on to O'Reilly with an open gesture of his fine white hand.
"Fifty-two, Señora Olivares," said the young man respectfully. "If I can get you to admit that, and stick to it, I feel sure we will win our case."
"Very well, Mr. O'Reilly." She bowed her head. As her visitors rose, she sat looking down at the dust-covered rugs. "Before everybody!" she murmured, as if to herself.
When they were tramping home, Father Joseph said that as for him, he would rather combat the superstitions of a whole Indian pueblo than the vanity of one white woman.
"And I would rather do almost anything than go through such a scene again," said the Bishop with a frown. "I don't think I ever assisted at anything so cruel."
Boyd O'Reilly defeated the Olivares brothers and won his case. The Bishop would not go to the court hearing, but Father Vaillant was there, standing in the malodorous crowd (there were no chairs in the court room), and his knees shook under him when the young lawyer, with the fierceness born of fright, poked his finger at his client and said: