turn to be astonished. Jean and the girl
attempted to conceal their rising color by casting their eyes upon the
floor. Marot pere was master of the situation.

"Your father was a noted surgeon," he continued, still holding the
girl's hand.

"One of the best of his time," said Henri, proudly.

"And your mother----"

"Is dead, monsieur."

"Ah!"

The look of pain that passed swiftly over M. Marot's face was
reflected in an audible sigh.

"One of the best of women," he went on, musingly,--"and you are the
living image of your mother when I last saw her. Her name, too----"

"Oh, monsieur!" interrupted Andree, excitedly, "you knew my mother,
then?"

"So well, my dear girl, that I asked her to be my wife."

"Ah!"

"Oh, monsieur!"

"Father!"

"That is the truth. It is the additional truth that my cousin, the
doctor, got her."

"My father was your cousin?" asked Lerouge. "Why, I come right by the
family resemblance, Jean!"

"Yes," laughingly retorted the latter, "and the family temper."

"I was not aware that your mother again married," observed M. Marot.

"Yes,--Monsieur Frederic Remy, the father of Andree, here," said
Henri. "Alas! neither he nor my mother long survived the loss of their
younger daughter."

"Then there is yet another child?"

"Was," replied the young man, sadly. "For Louise, who was two years
younger than Andree, disappeared one day----"

"Disappeared!"

"Yes; and has never been heard of to this date. She was scarcely three
years old. Whether she wandered away or was stolen, is dead or living,
we do not know. She was never seen again."

"What a terrible blow! What a terrible blow!" murmured the elder
Marot, thinking of the unhappy mother.

Mlle. Fouchette had reappeared a few moments before,--just in time to
hear this family history. But she immediately returned to the kitchen,
where she sank upon a low stool and bowed her face in her hands.

"Fouchette! Here, Fouchette!"

It was Jean's peremptory voice.

She hastily roused herself. She re-entered the little salon, and upon
a sign from Jean conducted Henri Lerouge and his sister to Jean's
bedroom, where she assisted Mlle. Remy to remove her hat. For up to
this time the party had been grouped in running conversation without
having settled down.

"How you tremble, child!" exclaimed Andree,--"and you look so scared
and pale. Is it, then, so bad as all that? What is the matter? Have
they been quarrelling? I don't understand."