“Carl Bernicci turned up alive after everybody had been thinking he was dead for two years,” he said. “He was looking for his wife, and he told the girls the strangest story you ever heard, Sadie.”
“Some lie, no doubt, like all the rest of his tales,” exclaimed Sadie Osborne indignantly, for her anger against the Italian began to revive afresh at hearing that he was alive.
“No; I think this was actual truth,” said Waverley Osborne, and he told his wife that the Italian was now rich and great, and had the title of a prince in his own country.
“Well, perhaps that is true,” said Sadie, “for I remember now that people said his father, the lazy old organ grinder, was a prince when in Italy. But what was he looking for his wife for? Didn’t he know”—she paused, and her kind eyes filled with tears, as they always did when she thought of the dreadful story that she had heard about Fair.
“He had heard that dreadful scandal, of course, and that was what made him try to drown himself,” said Waverley Osborne. “But, Sadie, I knew you will be glad to hear this: She never threw herself away, as people said. He has found out all that happened after she disappeared,” and he told in voluble language the story of Fair’s adoption by Mrs. Howard, and her life abroad up to the hour of her interrupted marriage with Bayard Lorraine.
“But she’s gone away now. Run away the very next day, and that was six months ago; but the prince has not found her yet, although he has run all over Europe after her, and now back to America,” he said.
Sadie’s tears were falling very fast now. The sunny locks of the child in her lap were quite wet with them.
“Why are you crying?” Waverley demanded.
“For joy and sorrow both.”
“Well, I don’t think he will ever find her, but still I wonder why she wouldn’t make up with him after he got rich?” Waverley Osborne answered thoughtfully, and then his wife thought the time had come for an explanation.