his only care and happiness. While she was yet a mere infant,
he placed her in the school where her mother had been teacher. There she
remained, first as pupil, by-and-by as governess, for more than sixteen
years. The child was called by an old family name that had been her
grandmother's and her great-grandmother's in the high and palmy days of
the Sainte Aulaires--Hortense."

"Hortense!" I cried, rising from my chair.

"It is not an uncommon name," said the lady. "Does it surprise you?"

"I--I beg your pardon, madam," I stammered, resuming my seat. "I once
had a dear friend of that name. Pray, go on."

"For ten years the refugee contrived to keep his little Hortense in the
safe and pleasant shelter of her Flemish home. He led a wandering life,
no one knew where; and earned his money, no one knew how. Travel-worn
and careworn, he was prematurely aged, and at fifty might well have been
mistaken for a man of sixty-five or seventy. Poor and broken as he was,
however, Monsieur de Sainte Aulaire was every inch a gentleman of the
old school; and his little girl was proud of him, when he came to the
school to see her. This, however, was very seldom--never oftener than
twice or three times in the year. When she saw him for the last time,
Hortense was about thirteen years of age. He looked paler, and thinner,
and poorer than ever; and when he bade her farewell, it was as if under
the presentiment that they might meet no more. He then told her, for the
first time, something of his story, and left with her at parting a small
coffer containing his decorations, a few trinkets that had been his
mother's, and his sword--the badge of his nobility."

The lady's voice faltered. I neither spoke nor stirred, but sat like a
man of stone.

Then she went on again:--

"The father never came again. The child, finding herself after a certain
length of time thrown upon the charity of her former instructors, was
glad to become under-teacher in their school. The rest of her history
may be told in a few words. From under-teacher she became head-teacher,
and at eighteen passed as governess into a private family. At twenty she
removed to Paris, and set foot for the first time in the land of her
fathers. All was now changed in France. The Bourbons reigned again, and
her father, had he reappeared, might have reclaimed his lost estates.
She sought him far and near. She employed agents to discover him. She
could not believe that he was dead. To be