She took us to an old Frenchwoman's stand, and we each drank a cup of the strong black coffee, which she insisted on paying for. Then we crossed the market to a deserted stall, whose owner had probably sold out her small stock at an early hour and gone home. We sat down, and she began: "You have told me your name. Mine is Gardiné—Véra Gardiné. I have a brother named Clément Gardiné."
"C. G.!" cried Lilly.
"C. G.," said she with a sigh. "You have perhaps heard of the Gardiné family? The old name is well known in ze city."
We confessed with some shame that it was unknown to us.
She sighed again: "Ah! it is a sad story: I will tell it to you in ze way ze most quickest. We are French, but born in zis country—creoles, you know. I was but a leetle girl when ze war began, and my brother had scarcely twenty years. But he was so brave, so reckless: go to ze war he would, almost breaking ze heart of his—his—fiancée—what you call it in English: his engaged girl—ze gentle, lovely Florine. When ze Northern army came to New Orleans, Florine's father and mother ran away with her to Texas—made of themselves refugees. Soon after both parents died, and Florine was left so all alone that my brother determined to marry her at once. He got a furlough from his general, and came home in disguise. It was joy all mixed with fear to see him. Blockade-steamers were running all ze time from New Orleans to Galveston, and he took passage in one of them. He had no baggages, but one small trunk that I packed for him—his dress-suit, some shirts that I had made, some lace handkerchiefs that I was sending to Florine. In this trunk too were ze star buttons, heirlooms in ze famille Gardiné. He was to spend his honeymoon in Texas until his furlough had expired: then he was to bring Florine to me, and he was to go back to his regiment. He left me, brave, strong, full of hope, and from zat time till one long year afterward I neither saw nor heard from mon frère.
"I was distracted. I wrote letters here, there, everywhere. It was no use. The city was besieged: I could not get out of it. Oh, what suffering to remember!
"One day, in my heart-sickness, longing to do something with my life, I went with one of ze good Sisters of our Church into ze city hospital. And there I found my brother, his head shaved, raving with fever! He had been fighting, they told me, with one of ze guerilla-bands around ze city—had been captured and brought there wounded dangerously. I took him home, nursed him night and day, and at last had my reward. He knew me—ze consciousness had come back to him. You can guess ze questions I poured out, but oh, mes chères demoiselles, you cannot guess ze sister's agony when I found zat mon pauvre frère had forgotten every circumstance of ze past year!"
"Oh, how dreadful!" cried Lilly, her eyes filling with tears. "What did you do?"
"What could I do? Ze doctair said it was not an uncommon case. There had been some injury to ze brain. Clément remembered coming to New Orleans, and making his preparations to go to Florine; but from zat time all was a dreadful blank. I drove him almost wild with my tears and questions, for what had become of Florine? As soon as he was well, and we could get away from the city, we went to Texas to try and find her, but our search was all in vain.
"And now you can judge what I felt when I saw ze star buttons in zis young lady's ears."—She turned to Lilly, and spoke in a voice all broken with emotion: "It seemed that at last I had a key to unlock ze door of that sad year. Tell me quickly, mademoiselle, where did you get them? Did Florine give them to you? Is she dead? Tell me all."