"'I have a daughter. Yes, even from thee I have hidden this secret, which tortures me. A daughter who loves me and who has not the right to confess this tenderness, no more than I have the right to give her my name. Ah! our youth, sad youth! I might have had a home to-day, a fireside of my own, a dear one near me, and instead of that, an affection of which I am ashamed and which I have hidden even from thee, Jacques, from thee, dost thou comprehend?' "I remember each of Rovère's words as if I was hearing them now. This conversation with my poor friend is among the most poignant yet most precious of my remembrances. With much emotion, which distressed me, the poor man revealed to me the secret which he had believed it his duty to hide from me so many years, and I vowed to him--I swore to him on my honor, and that is why I hesitated to speak, or rather refused to speak, not wishing to compromise any one, neither the dead nor living--I swore to him, Monsieur le Juge, to repeat nothing of what he told me to any one, to any one but to her"---- "Her?" interrogated M. Ginory. "His daughter," Dantin replied. The Examining Magistrate recalled that visitor in black, who had been seen occasionally at Rovère's apartments, and the little romance of which Paul Rodier had written in his paper--the romance of the Woman in Black! "And this daughter?" "She bears," said Dantin, with a discouraged gesture, "the name of the father which the law gives her, and this name is a great name, an illustrious name, that of a retired general officer, living in one of the provinces, a widower, and who adores the girl who is another man's child. The mother is dead. The father has never known. When dying, the mother revealed the secret to her daughter. She came, by command of the dead, to see Rovère, but as a Sister of Charity, faithful to the name which she bears. She does not wish to marry; she will never leave the crippled old soldier who calls her his daughter, and who adores her." "Oh!" said M. Ginory, remaining mute a moment before this very simple drama, and in which, in that moment of reflection, he comprehended, he analyzed, nearly all of the hidden griefs, the secret tears, the stifled sobs, the stolen kisses. "And that is why you kept silent?" he asked.