Louis De Marke buried his face in his hands, and George walked hurriedly back and forth in the room. The latter made one or two efforts to speak, but broke off as if the questions at his heart were too momentous. At last he drew close to Mary Margaret:—
“Where did she go from your house? Where is she now?”
His eyes were fixed almost wildly upon her; he trembled from head to foot.
“I don’t know, yer honor. An old lady, wid the queerest bonnet on ye ever seed, took her away somewhere into the country, or foreign parts maybe; and the baby was carried off by a gintleman as wanted a son, and so took the darlint to make an heir of him, and maybe a king one of these days—the Lord be praised, for he was a beauty all over.”
George walked unsteadily to his seat, and sat down with a low groan. Her words had wrung his heart with the most bitter disappointment.
“And this is all you know?” he said, faintly.
Margaret looked at him with her kind eyes, and answered that she could remember nothing more.
“And this young person, the fair one, I mean, did she never mention her name to you in all that time?” inquired Louis.
“I disremember, yer honor. We called her the darlint at home: but it seems to me that she once told the old man that her name was Catharine, or the like of that!”
“Catharine!” broke from the lips of both the young men, and actuated by one impulse, each grasped the hand of the other.