Louis De Marke buried his face in his hands, and George walked hurriedly back and forth in the room. The latter made one or two efforts to speak, but broke off as if the questions at his heart were too momentous. At last he drew close to Mary Margaret:— “Where did she go from your house? Where is she now?” His eyes were fixed almost wildly upon her; he trembled from head to foot. “I don’t know, yer honor. An old lady, wid the queerest bonnet on ye ever seed, took her away somewhere into the country, or foreign parts maybe; and the baby was carried off by a gintleman as wanted a son, and so took the darlint to make an heir of him, and maybe a king one of these days—the Lord be praised, for he was a beauty all over.” George walked unsteadily to his seat, and sat down with a low groan. Her words had wrung his heart with the most bitter disappointment. “And this is all you know?” he said, faintly. Margaret looked at him with her kind eyes, and answered that she could remember nothing more. “And this young person, the fair one, I mean, did she never mention her name to you in all that time?” inquired Louis. “I disremember, yer honor. We called her the darlint at home: but it seems to me that she once told the old man that her name was Catharine, or the like of that!” “Catharine!” broke from the lips of both the young men, and actuated by one impulse, each grasped the hand of the other. Mary Margaret arose to go. That moment a servant knocked at the door. All was ready for the journey, which Louis had forgotten. The brothers looked at each other in surprise, as if the idea of separation had just arisen. “No, I will not leave my native land till this mystery is explained,” said Louis, in answer to his brother’s anxious look. The servant went out, Mary Margaret gathered up her basket and disappeared with him, leaving the brothers alone. “She lives, I am certain that Catharine lives,” exclaimed George, sinking down upon the sofa, and gazing at the pale face of his brother through a mist of joyful tears. Louis could not answer, for in his heart there was a wild struggle. Self-reproach, regret, and a thousand tender memories of his wife, struggled hard with another image that rose, spite of himself, amid these sad memories, leaving him in a state of strange excitement. At last George became more composed. “Now,” he said, “we have the world before us. Let there be no rest till all this strange story is put into proof.” Louis arose. “I am ready, brother.” Then, with a burst of natural sorrow, which was not in the least incompatible with the feelings we have just described, his eyes filled with tears, and he exclaimed, with a world of regret in his voice,— “My poor, poor wife!” CHAPTER LXVI. A DOMESTIC STORM.