Dumesnil, staggering, his eyes haggard, stretched out his arms as if to save himself from falling. Mme. Daubrel, deeply as she herself was moved, rushed to him to support him. But the comedian pushed her away, crying:
"She was my daughter—my daughter!"
And he fell on his knees beside the death-bed.
Despair had wrung from the old man the secret which his paternal love had made him keep so bravely for more than twenty years.
A fortnight later, after a funeral ceremony performed in the chapel at Pampeln, in presence of the prince, his children, Vera Soublaieff, and Mme. Podoi, the mortal remains of the Countess Lise were lowered into the vault of the Olsdorfs.
The "divorced princess" had come again under the roof of the man whose name she had borne—but she came a corpse.
Almost at the same hour, on one of the piers of New York, Mme. Daubrel was weeping over her son, while her husband smiled upon them.
Repentant and pardoned, the woman separated by decree from her husband had now a new future before her, and took again her place by her husband's hearth.
THE END.