"Enough to understand," Jeanne said; "but not enough to speak much. Thank you, madame, for receiving us so kindly, for we are all alone in the world."
Mrs. Sandwith saw the girl's lip quiver, and putting aside her longing to talk to her son, said:
"Harry, do take them all out in the garden for a short time. They are all talking at once, and this is a perfect babel."
And thus having cleared the room she sat down to talk to the two girls, and soon made them feel at home with her by her unaffected kindness. Dr. Sandwith soon afterwards ran out to the excited chattering group in the garden, and after a few minutes' happy talk with him, Harry spoke to him of the visitors who were closeted with his mother.
"I want you to make them feel it is their home, father. They will be no burden pecuniarily, for there are money and jewels worth a large sum over here."
"Of course I know that," Dr. Sandwith said, "seeing that, as you know, they were consigned to me, and the marquis wrote to ask me to act as his agent. The money is invested in stock, and the jewels are in the hands of my bankers. I had begun to wonder what would become of it all, for I was by no means sure that the whole family had not perished, as well as yourself."
"There are only the three girls left," Harry said.
"In that case they will be well off, for the marquis inclosed me a will, saying that if anything should happen to him, and the estates should be altogether lost, the money and proceeds of the jewels were to be divided equally among his children. You must have gone through a great deal, old boy. You are scarcely nineteen, and you look two or three and twenty."
"I shall soon look young again, father, now I have got my mind clear of anxiety. But I have had a trying time of it, I can tell you; but it's too long a story to go into now, I will tell you all the whole yarn this evening. I want you to go in with me now to the girls and make them at home. All this must be just as trying for them at present as the dangers they have gone through."
The young ones were all forbidden to follow, and after an hour spent with his parents and the girls in the dining-room, Harry was pleased to see that the latter were beginning to feel at their ease, and that the strangeness was wearing off.