"You have some kind of a history, I suppose," added the doctor, greatly interested in the girl.
"Mon père don't like to talk about it. He seems to be afraid that some one will get me away from him; but I'm sure I don't want to go away from him; I wouldn't leave him for a king's palace."
"Why do you call him 'mon père'?"
"He taught me to call him so when I was little. André's father was an Italian, and his mother a French woman; but he was born in London."
"Where did he find you?"
"At the cholera hospital."
"Where?"
"I don't know. He always looked so sad, and his heart seemed to be so pained when I asked him any questions about myself, that I stopped doing so long ago. When I was five years old, he found me playing about the hospital, where hundreds and hundreds of people had died with cholera. I had the cholera myself; and he came to play with me every day; and when they were going to send me to an orphan asylum, or some such place, he took me away, and promised to take care of me. Ah, mon père" said she, glancing tenderly at the sick man, and wiping a tear from her eyes, "how well he has kept his promise! I can't help thinking he loved me more than any real father could. I never saw any father who was so kind, and tender, and loving to his child as André is to me."
"And you don't know where this hospital was?"
"No, sir; and I don't want to know. Mon père thinks my parents died of the cholera; but André has been father and mother to me. He would die if he lost me."