"Good!" he exclaimed, joyfully; "and the other—what was—"
"His name?" she interrupted, again smiling. "His name was Dorothy Reed, sir! They were twins—a beautiful boy and girl."
To the latest day of his life Donald never will forget that moment; and he never will understand why he did not jump to his feet, grasp her hand, ask her dozens of questions at once, and finally implore her to tell him what he could do to prove his gratitude. He had, in fancy, acted out just such a scene while on his hopeful way to Paris. But, no. In reality, he just drew his chair a little nearer hers,—feeling, as he afterwards told his uncle, thoroughly comfortable,—and in the quietest possible way assured her that she was right as to the boy's name, but, to his mind, it would be very difficult for her to say which little girl she had saved—whether it was the baby-sister or the baby-cousin.
This was a piece of diplomacy on his part that would have delighted Mr. Wogg. True, he would prefer to be entirely frank on all occasions, but, in this instance, he felt that Mr. Wogg would highly disapprove of his "giving the case away" by letting the woman know that he hoped to identify Dorothy as his sister. What if Madame René, in the hope of more surely "hearing of something greatly to her advantage," were to favor his desire that the rescued baby should be Dorothy and not Delia?
"What do you mean?" asked Madame René.
"I mean, that possibly the little girl you saved was my cousin and not my sister," he replied, boldly.
Ellen Lee shrank from him a moment, and then almost angrily said:
"Why not your sister? Ah, I understand!—you would then be sole heir. But I must tell the truth, young gentleman; so much has been on my conscience all these years that I wish to have nothing left to reproach me. There was a time when, to get a reward, I might, perhaps, have been willing to say that the other rescued baby was your cousin, but now my heart is better. Truth is truth. I held little Donald and Dorothy both in these arms that terrible night. If I saved any little girl, it was Dorothy; and Dorothy was Donald Reed's twin sister."
Donald gave an exclamation of delight, but he checked himself as he glanced toward the short, light-haired Madame, whose peculiar appearance had at first threatened to blight his expectations. She was now seated by the small window, industriously mending a coarse woollen stocking, and evidently caring very little for the visitor, as he was not in search of a pastry-cook.
"We need not mind her," Madam René explained. "Marie Dubois is a good, dull-witted soul, who stays here with me when she is out of a situation. She cannot understand a word of English. We have decided to separate soon, and to leave these lodgings. I cannot make enough money with my needle to live here; and so we must both go out and work—I as a sewing-woman, and she as a cook. Ah me! In the years gone by I hoped to go to America and live with that lovely lady, your poor mother."