'Thank heaven, you speak, and rationally at last,' said her attendant, casting aside her embroidery and coming softly to her side, laid her cool hand gently on Alison's forehead. 'Pauvre enfant! pauvre enfant!' she repeated, caressingly. 'But _where_ am I, and _who_ are you?' asked Alison, in a weak but impatient manner. 'I am Sister Lisette, and you are safe, safe with friends, and ere long your own people will soon be here to inquire for you.' 'My friends,' she murmured, with a puzzled expression, as her thoughts now went back to her father's sick-room in the Hôtel St. Antoine; to Cadbury, at the thought of which she shivered; to the Bal Masqué at the theatre; the Café au Progrès, and the insolence of 'Captain Smith;' her flight through the snowy streets; her fall at the door of a house, the nature of which she knew not; all these things floated dimly and dreamily before her now, though they seemed to have happened but a few hours ago. 'How fortunate that you had the power to ring our bell before you fainted, child,' said the nun, caressing her and kissing her cheek. 'You might have died in the snow otherwise.' 'Last night?' 'No--child--it was several nights ago.' 'Several?' 'Yes.' 'Oh, papa, papa! has he been here?' cried Alison, feebly, in great anguish of mind, yet unable from weakness to raise her head from the pillow. 'No, for doubtless he knew not where you were.' 'Oh, he will be dead--dead with terror!' wailed Alison. 'Am I in a hospital?' 'No, child, in my house,' said the nun, sweetly. 'Your house?' queried Alison, with very open eyes. 'In the Beguinage, in the Rue Rouge.' Thus it was that both Sir Ranald and Lord Cadbury had utterly failed to trace her, and fortunate it was indeed for Alison that she had fallen into such good hands as those of the Beguines, who are a religious order, altogether peculiar to Belgium, each nun having a private residence of her own within the general enclosure. The clatter of the ponderous bell, as the pull left her hand, had soon brought aid to her. She was denuded of her wet and sodden attire, put to bed in the little mansion occupied by Sister Lisette, and, before the angelus bell rang in the chapel next forenoon, she was in a highly feverish state, and in a delirium which lasted several nights and days, with intermissions of fretful sleep, during all of which time nothing coherent could be gleaned from her as to her name, or where she resided, whence she came, and how it was that she was abroad in the streets alone and in such a night. Her little ravings led them to know that she was English; her costume, and the delicacy and beauty of her person, that she was undoubtedly a lady; but, save a ring or two, she had no purse, card-case, or aught to indicate who she was; but the name of 'Alison' worked upon some of her clothing at once interested deeply Sister Lisette, who was also an Alison, but adopted the French diminutive of it.