Antoine pointed to the scene within the room, and Peter stooped down and peered in—well he might. Anton Dormeur was on his knees beside the child, moistening her lips with brandy from a teaspoon (it was a spoon that had fallen from her dress, but he knew nothing of that, for he found it on the floor without thinking how it came there). He spoke encouraging words to her, talked to her as men talk to babies; touched her forehead with his fingers, and took up one of her long fair tresses to press it to his lips.
Presently she sighed heavily, and opened her great eyes upon him, then flushed, drew herself further back in the chair, and began to cry.
"Pierre—Pierre Dobree!" shouted the old man, striding to the door, "he should be here; where is he?"
"Here am I," said Peter, suddenly confronting him, and drawing Antoine into the room, all grimed and torn, and smirched with mud, as he was.
"What is the meaning of that?" said old Dormeur, glaring into Peter's eyes, and laying a grip upon his shoulder that must have left a bruise there.
"The meaning of that is," said Peter steadily, and looking back with an eye as fierce as his master's—"the meaning of that is, that when nearly nineteen years ago I stood under St. Guillotine and vowed a vow, I meant to keep it. That when Sara Dufarge—once Sara Dormeur—my loved and lovely mistress, joined her husband—not by the guillotine, but by a broken heart in a little country lodging at Nogent—she left her child—that child—to the nurse who had been faithful to her—to my own good sister Nancy, who, bringing her to England when she and her husband came to escape the troubles, found here another sister, the widow Rondeau—childless—to whom came as a legacy that same little orphaned one who lies now in her grandsire's chair."
Anton Dormeur stood and glared for a moment at the undaunted little old man, who had thus kept a secret for eighteen years, though he had been here in his service; but even in his bitter anger there came to him the recollection of the stern relentless temper with which he had blotted out his daughter's name from the family record; and, with a drooping head and tears that fell fast on his furrowed cheeks, he went again and knelt beside the girl, who now sat looking at them all with wide and wondering eyes.
"Peter Dobree," he said presently, "go or send for your sister Rondeau.—Antoine, dear lad, go you into the kitchen and see if any one has come in; for we will have supper through all, and Sara, Sara, my child, my little one, you must never leave me more."
"What! and are you, monsieur, truly my grandfather, and Monsieur Antoine truly your grandson? Then he is—no, not my brother; what then?—But I may kiss him?" said the wondering girl, as she stood the centre of a talking group, apart from which stood the lad, who still looked at her wistfully enough.
They broke into a laugh, at which she turned red as a rose, and with a sudden gesture, which shot a pain to the old man's heart, for it was that of her mother once again, turned away.