“Louise––that name is very dear to me,” replied the Lady softly. She visioned a scene of long ago when an infant Louise had been snatched from her young arms––the arms of a mother deprived of her offspring.
“She is my sister,” resumed Henriette––“lost, 79 wandering and alone, on the streets of Paris. Oh, help me find her, and I––I will do anything you say!” The poor creature sobbed in her double misery.
She pointed to her own eyes in gesture to portray Louise’s misfortune: “Blind––so helpless––it was just like taking care of a baby.” She told the story of her abduction and the loss of her sister, then of Chevalier de Vaudrey’s vain efforts and hers to trace her.
The Countess de Linieres leaned forward in intense sympathy conjoined with a certain weird premonition.
“She isn’t really my sister,” went on Henriette, “but I owe her the love of a mother and sister combined. She saved us from want and death. My father found her on the steps of Notre Dame––”
A low cry escaped the Countess.
“––where he was about to put me as a foundling, there not being a morsel of food in our wretched home. This other baby was half buried under the snow. He warmed the little bundle against his body and mine––and, rather than let us perish there of the cold, returned homeward with both infants in his arms. Suspended from 80 the other baby’s neck were a bag of gold and this locket––”
The Countess gasped. She put a hand to her heart and seemed about to faint before recovering strength to examine the locket that Henriette handed to her.
It was a miniature that the Prefect’s wife recognized as her own!
Opened, it disclosed an aged and yellowed bit of paper, on which the writing was still visible: