"This is my small son," said Guy gravely. "Shake hands, Alain, with this lady." The child's large frank eyes met Adrienne's, and his face softened as he saw her smile. With a little foreign bow, he raised her hand gently to his lips and kissed it. Adrienne stood still and gazed at him. She could find no words to say. "I should have been back sooner," said Guy in his imperturbable voice, "if it had not been for this small person. I had a tremendous job in finding him, and a difficult job in bringing him away. The people he was with were quite willing to part with him, but he was not willing to come, and I had to spend several days with him before I could inspire him with the necessary confidence to come with me happily. Even now he looks upon me with suspicion; he is not quite sure whether I have not a rod in pickle for him up my sleeve." Adrienne drew the child to her. "Why, there is nothing of you, Alain," she said tenderly; "you will get fat and jolly now that you are with your Daddy." She was looking at his tiny arms and legs, which were like sticks, and the boy looked down at himself and up at her. "Aunt Susy always said I ran too much to get fat. Who are you? I like you." "I'm your cousin—Cousin Adrienne." She sat down in the little porch, and he climbed upon her knee and began fingering her white ivory beads. "Is this your rosary? I have a rosary in a little box which once belonged to a mother of mine. Did you know I had a mother? When I was a baby I had. And she gave me to Aunt Susy before she went to heaven and Aunt Susy said she'd always wanted a little boy like me. But I never knew I had any father except the Bon Dieu in Heaven." Here he stole a glance at the Count, who was leaning against an old apple tree and watching them. "You have an awfully nice father, Alain," said Adrienne under her breath. "I shall get to know him soon," said Alain wistfully; "but he's very tall and strong and strange to me. Aunt Susy's husband was a little fat man, always laughing. He and I played in the hay together." "Well," said Guy, coming forward, "will he be a shock to your aunt, do you think?" "Does she know that you are married?" "That I was, you mean," said Guy, and a little bitter smile crossed his lips. "No, she does not; it was but a ten months' interlude, a sudden venture, a swift regret. Frankly I had no idea that this small person existed. I had been told that he had died as a baby. The woman who took him from his mother coveted him and kept him, and wrote giving me particulars of his death. Now she's at the point of death herself, and glad to relinquish the care of him." "And you heard about him, and went off to America to hunt for him?" said Adrienne. "Why did not you tell us?"