"I don't know any Stewart." But at that Ste. Marie gave a laugh, and a
tinge of red came over the Irishman's cheeks.
"And so to save Captain Stewart the trouble," continued the wounded man,
"I'll tell you my name with pleasure. I don't know why I shouldn't.
It's Ste. Marie."
"What?" cried O'Hara hoarsely. "What? Say that again!" He came forward
a swift step or two into the room, and he stared at the man on the bed
as if he were staring at a ghost.
"Ste. Marie?" he cried in a whisper. "It's impossible!
"What are you," he demanded, "to Gilles, Comte de Ste. Marie de
Mont-Perdu? What are you to him?"
"He was my father," said the younger man, "but he is dead. He has been
dead for ten years." He turned his head with a little grimace of pain
to look curiously after the Irishman, who had all at once turned away
across the room, and stood still beside a window, with bent head.
"Why?" he questioned. "What about my father? Why did you ask that?"
O'Hara did not answer at once, and he did not stir from his place by the
window, but after awhile he said--
"I knew him ... That's all." And after another space he came back
beside the bed, and once more looked down upon the young man who lay
there. His face was veiled, inscrutable. It betrayed nothing.
"You have a look of your father," said he. "That was what puzzled me a
little. I was just saying to----I was just thinking that there was
something familiar about you.... Ah well! we've all come down in the
world since then. The Ste. Marie blood though! Who'd have thought it!"
The man shook his head a little sorrowfully, but Ste. Marie stared up at
him in frowning incomprehension. The pain had dulled him somewhat.