Carmontelle turned to his friend.

"Poor Una!" he said; "it is no wonder she fled in dismay, after hearing such a tale of horror. Come, let us go. We have heard all that madame's malignity can invent to torture two loving hearts, and the only task that remains to us is to prove it false."

"Which you will never do!" she exclaimed, with triumphant malice.

"Time will prove," he retorted, as he led the agitated Van Zandt out of the house, ignoring the ceremony of adieus to its mistress.

But his face grew very grave once they gained the darkness of the street. To himself he said, in alarm:

"Can her tale be true? It sounded very plausible."

To Eliot he said:

"I shall put this affair in the hands of one who will sift it to the bottom. Then, if Madame Remond has lied to us, she shall suffer for her sin."

"Poor Una! my poor little Una! How she must have suffered, bearing this bitter knowledge alone!" Eliot said, and a bursting sigh heaved his tortured breast.

"She was a wise little girl, at all events," Carmontelle answered, gravely. "Of course, if madame's tale be true, there was no other way proper for either, cruel as it seems to say it."

Eliot had no answer ready, but in his heart he knew that his friend spoke truly. Better, far better, that he and Una should suffer than to throw the blighting disgrace of his wife's parentage upon unborn descendants of the proud name of Van Zandt.

He could hardly share the incredulity of Carmontelle. Madame's story had been so plausible it had shaken his doubts. Now, indeed, it seemed to him that all hope was over. He and Una were indeed parted forever.

He went back to the Magnolias with his friend, and excusing himself from all society, went up to his room alone. He spent some time leaning from the window, his sad gaze roving over the moonlit city, thinking of Una, his lost bride, so near him that an hour's rapid walking would have borne him to her side, but sundered so widely apart from him by sorrow.

There came to him in the stillness a memory of the song he had sung to her so often, and which she had loved so well, "The Two Little Lives." How well it fitted now!

"Poor little daisy!" Eliot sighed; then, bitterly, "Ah, if we had but died in prison that time, how blessed we should have been—never having this cruel knowledge to break our hearts!"

He flung himself down on the bed and tried to sleep. A disturbed slumber, mixed with frightful dreams, came to him. His head was hot, and his thirst was excessive. He rose several times and groped his way to the ice-pitcher, drinking greedily, until at last he had drained it all. In the morning they found him there delirious.

The old doctor shook his head.

"Brain fever!" he said. "He has had some terrible shock, I think, from the symptoms. I shall send you a trained hospital nurse, Carmontelle, for there must be careful nursing here if we bring the poor fellow out alive."

The nurse came, and was duly installed in his position, aided and abetted by Maud and Edith.

Carmontelle, after a day or two, stole away from the house long enough to consult his family lawyer on the subject of ferreting to the bottom the story the wicked Mme. Remond had told him of Una's birth.

At an early period of the narration of his story the lawyer became visibly excited.

"Go on. Tell me everything," he said, nervously, and Carmontelle obeyed.

When he had finished, Mr. Frayser cried out, eagerly:

"Upon my soul, Carmontelle, I believe the good Lord himself has sent you to me. You know I was Lorraine's lawyer?"

"I did not know it," was the answer.

"Yes," said Mr. Frayser; "and my client died a few months ago, in an insane asylum."

"So I was told by Madame Lorraine—or, as I should perhaps say, Remond."

"Yes, she married that wretch some time ago, and they came on here after Lorraine's death, to look after his property."

"Yes," said Carmontelle, rather indifferently. He was not much interested in the dead man's property.

"Lorraine was immensely rich, you know," continued Frayser. "Madame thought she would step into the money without let or hinderance. She wanted to sell all the property in New Orleans and get away with the spoils."

"Yes," absently.

The little lawyer smiled.

"Monsieur, you don't look much interested," he said; "but listen: Monsieur Lorraine left a box of private papers in my safe when he first employed me as his lawyer, at the time of his marriage to the actress. When I examined these papers, after his death, I found that the greater part of his wealth did not belong to him, but was held in trust for another person."

"Another person!" Carmontelle echoed, brightening up with sudden curiosity.

"A little child," continued Frayser, his little black eyes twinkling with fun at Carmontelle's eagerness.

"Go on, go on."

"It seems that Lorraine had an only sister who was married during the war to a very wealthy man, a colonel—mon Dieu! Carmontelle, what a coincidence! it was your own name—he was a Colonel Carmontelle!"

"And lived in Alabama—and was killed in battle just before the close of the war. He was my cousin!" exclaimed Carmontelle, excitedly.

"The same," replied the lawyer. "Well, his death was such a shock to his young wife that, when her little one was born, a month later, she died—of heart-break, or, at least, so say the letters of her friends, that were written from Alabama to summon him to come for the little orphan heiress."

"Una!" exclaimed Carmontelle, radiantly.

"Most likely," said the lawyer, smiling. "But permit me to go on with my prosaic story. According to these private papers, some of which are in the form of memorandums, Lorraine brought the babe to New Orleans with its negro nurse, and very soon afterward married, more for the child's sake than his own, and went to housekeeping on Esplanade Street."

"All is clear as day. Thank the good God, Una's stainless parentage is established, and I will go this day and bring her to the side of her suffering husband," Carmontelle exclaimed, joyously.

"I think you may safely do so," smiled the delighted lawyer. "But I have still more to tell you. The physician in charge at the asylum where Lorraine died wrote to me to come and make preparations for his burial. I went and heard a strange story. Lorraine, in his last illness, had recovered his reason and memory. He had dictated and signed a paper to be given to me. You shall read it yourself."

He brought out from his desk the paper, and Carmontelle eagerly ran over the contents.

Briefly, it was to the effect that Lorraine, just previous to the insanity that had overtaken him, had found out that his wife was false to him, and that she had married him only for the money which she believed to be his own. Realizing suddenly that he had made no arrangements by which his little niece would receive her inheritance, should he be suddenly stricken by death, and fearful of Mme. Lorraine's treachery in the matter, he had executed a will in which he left to the little Mary Carmontelle the whole of his own small patrimony, together with the wealth of her dead father. He had hidden the will in the library, intending to place it in Frayser's care, but his mind had suddenly gone wrong with the stress of trouble, and his removal by his wife to an insane asylum had put a sudden end to everything.

"Madame knows all this?" Carmontelle queried, looking up from the paper.

"Yes; for I confronted her with it when she came to me to settle up the property. She was as bold as brass, and declared that the child had died in infancy. I made a search in the library, all the same, for the missing will, but it could not be found. Doubtless that wicked woman has destroyed it. I would not take her word that the little heiress was dead, as she could offer no proof at all except the word of that grim maid-servant of hers, so I have been advertising in a number of papers for the child or young lady, as she is now, if living. You will see from that paper that I am appointed her guardian until her marriage."

"She has been married nearly six years. Dear little Una! she is my cousin, and the name I gave her when I adopted her as my daughter was really her own. It is the oddest thing, too, that the nuns at the convent baptized her Marie, her own name, but in the French form. Fact is certainly stranger than fiction!" exclaimed Maud's husband, in wonder and delight.

"It is wonderful, certainly," agreed Frayser, "and your visit to me to-day is one of the most wonderful things about it. I was beginning to give up all hope of finding the missing heiress, and Mme. Remond and her rascally husband were pressing me so furiously that I was beginning to fear I must make some concessions to them. But now all is made plain, and I can lay my hand on Lorraine's niece and heiress and oust her enemy from the place she has usurped so long. But I must tell you one thing, unless that missing will can be found, the ex-actress will make us trouble yet over Mrs. Van Zandt's inheritance."

"Never mind about the will now. What is money when it lies in our power to reunite the crushed hearts of that long-parted husband and wife. Let us get into my carriage and go and fetch Una away from her convent to the side of her sick husband!" cried Carmontelle.

"Agreed with all my heart!" answered Frayser.