My name instead of an answer! Mattia and I looked at one another, thunderstruck. As we stood looking stupidly into each other's faces, I saw a handkerchief being waved at the end of the wall. We ran to the spot. It was not until we got to the hedge which surrounded the other side of the garden that we saw the one who was waving. Lise! At last we had found her and not far away were Mrs. Milligan and Arthur! But who had sung? That was the question that Mattia and I asked as soon as we found words. "I," answered Lise. Lise was singing! Lise was talking! The doctors had said that one day Lise would recover her speech, and very probably, under the shock of a violent emotion, but I did not think that it could be possible. And yet the miracle had happened, and it was upon knowing that I had come to her and hearing me sing the Neapolitan song I used to sing to her, that she had felt this intense emotion, and was restored to her voice. I was so overcome at this thought that I had to stretch out my hand to steady myself. "Where is Mrs. Milligan?" I asked, "and Arthur?" Lise moved her lips, but she could only utter inarticulate sounds, then impatiently she used the language of her hands, for her tongue was still clumsy in forming words. She pointed down the garden and we saw Arthur lying in an invalid's chair. On one side of him was his mother, and on the other ... Mr. James Milligan. In fear, in fact almost terror, I stooped down behind the hedge. Lise must have wondered why I did so. Then I made a sign to her to go. "Go, Lise, or you'll betray me," I said. "Come to-morrow here at nine o'clock and be alone, then I can talk to you." She hesitated for a moment, then went up the garden. "We ought not to wait till to-morrow to speak to Mrs. Milligan," said Mattia. "In the meantime that uncle might kill Arthur. He has never seen me and I'm going to see Mrs. Milligan at once and tell her." There was some reason in what Mattia proposed, so I let him go off, telling him that I would wait for him at a short distance under a big chestnut tree. I waited a long time for Mattia. More than a dozen times I wondered if I had not made a mistake in letting him go. At last I saw him coming back, accompanied by Mrs. Milligan. I ran to her, and, seizing the hand that she held out to me, I bent over it. But she put her arms round me and, stooping down, kissed me tenderly on the forehead. "Poor, dear child," she murmured. With her beautiful white fingers she pushed the hair back from my forehead and looked at me for a long time. "Yes, yes," she whispered softly. I was too happy to say a word. "Mattia and I have had a long talk," she said, "but I want you to tell me yourself how you came to enter the Driscoll family." I told her what she asked and she only interrupted me to tell me to be exact on certain points. Never had I been listened to with such attention. Her eyes did not leave mine.