e child's head, "these things your devout friends
suggest, you should do, Princess."

Her clear unwavering eye looked steadfastly at him, but her face turned
pale.

"Why do you call him monseigneur the heir to the duchy of Bercy?" she
said almost coldly, and with a little fear in her look too.

"Because I have come here to tell you the truth, and to place in your
hands the record of an act of justice."

Drawing from his pocket a parchment gorgeous with seals, he stooped,
and taking the hands of the child, he placed it in them. "Hold it tight,
hold it tight, my little friend, for it is your very own," he said to
the child with cheerful kindliness. Then stepping back a little, and
looking earnestly at Guida, he added with a motion of the hand towards
the child:

"You must learn the truth from him."

"Oh, what can you mean--what can you mean?" she exclaimed. Dropping upon
her knees, and running an arm round the child, she opened the parchment
and read.

"What--what right has he to this?" she cried in a voice of dismay.
"A year ago you dispossessed his father from the duchy. Ah, I do not
understand it! You--only you are the Duc de Bercy."

Her eyes were shining with a happy excitement and tenderness. No such
look had been in them for many a day. Something that had long slept was
waking in her, something long voiceless was speaking. This man brought
back to her heart a glow she had never thought to feel again, the glow
of the wonder of life and of a girlish faith.

"I am only Detricand of Vaufontaine," he answered. "What, did you--could
you think that I would dispossess your child? His father was the adopted
son of the Duc de Bercy. Nothing could wipe that out, neither law nor
nations. You are always Princess Guida, and your child is always Prince
Guilbert d'Avranche--and more than that."

His voice became lower, his war-beaten face lighted with that fire and
force which had made him during years past a figure in the war records
of Europe.

"I unseated Philip d'Avranche," he continued, "because he acquired the
duchy through--a misapprehension; because the claims of the House of
Vaufontaine were greater. We belonged; he was an alien. He had a right
to his adoption, he had no right to his duchy--no real right in the
equity of nations. But all the time I never forgot that the wife of
Philip d'Avranche and her child had rights infinitely beyond his own.
All that he achieved was theirs by every principle of justice.