One day, being left to myself while my aunt entertained a visitor, I began drawing from memory a sketch of my old home, the Tour d'Antin. I became so interested in my work as to take no note of the time, till I was surprised by the entrance of my uncle and Father Martien. I had not seen the latter gentleman for some weeks, nor was I at all glad to behold him now. My religion had become to me more and more an empty profession, and though I still went regularly to mass and confession, my attendance was the merest form. At mass and vespers, though I kept my book open, I thought of anything rather than the services, and as to my confessions, if I had repeated the Confiteor correctly, and then gone on in the orthodox devout whisper to say that I had become a Moslem and the fifteenth wife of the Grand Bashaw, good old Father Le Moyne would have been none the wiser, but would have given me absolution in his usual gentle, nasal sing-song. I had learned to love and respect the old man, for though indolent to a degree, he was kind and fatherly, and did not disgrace himself with wine or worse things, and it was with real dismay that I contemplated exchanging him for the sharp-sighted, cold Father Martien. My uncle looked at the sketch and commended it, saying that it showed real talent. He then began asking me questions about it, sitting down with the drawing in his hand. At last— "There is one thing, Vevette, which I have hesitated to ask you about, not wishing to revive painful memories; but the time has arrived when such an inquiry becomes necessary. Where did your father conceal his treasure?" "His treasure!" I repeated. "I don't understand." My uncle contracted his brows. "Do not trifle with me," said he sternly. "I am well informed that my unhappy brother invested a great deal of the money which he acquired in one way and another in plate and jewels. What did he do with them? I know that he left them concealed somewhere about the estate; but where?" "I do not know," I answered, with perfect truth; "I know that he and my cousin—" I could not bring myself to say Andrew—"hid away a part of what silver there was, but I never heard what they did with it. He sold a good deal, I know." "And what disposition did he make of the money?" "He turned a large part of it into diamonds. The rest he left with my foster-father, Simon Sablot, who afterward brought it to my mother in England." "And the jewels, my daughter, what of them?" asked Father Martien. "Oh, we carried them to England with us," I answered, inwardly rejoicing to give an answer so little satisfactory. "My mother sold them in London, and invested a part of the money in a little estate at Tre Madoc—the Welles House. The rest is in the hands of my lord, unless he has put it into land."