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!
"Ah! for the morrow bringeth such sorrow,
Captured the lark was, and life grew dim;
There, too, the daisy torn from the way-side,
Prisoned and dying wept for him
Once more the lark sung; fainter his voice grew;
Her little song was hushed and o'er;
Two little lives gone out of the sunshine,
Out of this bright world for evermore."
"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.