"Let this beggar see it, please," said Donald, blithely; and in a moment he was by the window comparing his samples with the cape-lining as knowingly as a dry-goods buyer.
"Exactly alike!" he exclaimed. Then with an invisible little shudder, he added: "Hold! let's try the flavor."
This test was unsatisfactory. But, after explanations, the fact remained, to the satisfaction of both, that the "goods" were exactly the same, but that Madame René's cape-lining having often been washed was quite divested of its salt.
Here was another discovery. Donald began to feel himself a rival of the great Wogg himself. Strange to say, in further corroboration of the story of the buxom matron at Liverpool, Madame René actually gave Donald a fragment of the gown that had been given to her so long ago; and it was identical, in color and pattern, with the piece Mr. Wogg had lately sent him.
"How in the world did you ever get these pieces, Master Donald?" asked Madame René.
Whereupon Donald told her all about his Liverpool friend and her rag-bag—much to Madame's delight, for she was thankful to know that the good woman who had helped her long ago was still alive and happy.
"And now," said Donald, pleasantly, "let me hear more of your own history, for it interests me greatly. Where have you lived all these years?"
"Well, Master Donald, I went on keeping my own counsel, as I told you, and never saying a word about the wreck or the two dear babies, and living with Mr. Percival's family as seamstress and nursery governess, under my old French name of Eloise Louvain. I was there till, one day, we said we'd just get married and seek our fortunes together."
"We!" repeated Donald, astonished and rather shocked; "not you and Mr. Percival?"
"Oh, no, indeed!—I and Edouard René," she said, in a tone that gave Don to understand that Edouard René was the only man that any girl in her senses ever could have chosen for a husband.