d in her lap.
She leaned toward him eagerly. "It is strange. I've thought about it a
great deal."

"Alice Tarleton; that is right; Alice is a name of the family. Lady
Alice Tarleton was the mother of the first Sir Garnett Tarleton who
came over in the time of Yardley. It's a great family. One of the
oldest and best in Virginia." He looked at her now with a gaze of
concentrated interest, under which her eyes fell. "Why, this is
romantic!" he exclaimed, "absolutely romantic. And you don't know how
you came by this locket? You don't know who was your father, your
mother?"

"I do not know anything."

"And what does Monsieur Roussillon know?"

"Just as little."

"But how came he to be taking you and caring for you? He must know how
he got you, where he got you, of whom he got you? Surely he knows--"

"Oh, I know all that. I was twelve years old when Papa Roussillon took
me, eight years ago. I had been having a hard life, and but for him I
must have died. I was a captive among the Indians. He took me and has
cared for me and taught me. He has been very, very good to me. I love
him dearly."

"And don't you remember anything at all about when, where, how the
Indians got you?"

"No." She shook her head and seemed to be trying to recollect
something. "No, I just can't remember; and yet there has always been
something like a dream in my mind, which I could not quite get hold of.
I know that I am not a Catholic. I vaguely remember a sweet woman who
taught me to pray like this: 'Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be
Thy name.'"

And Alice went on through the beautiful and perfect prayer, which she
repeated in English with infinite sweetness and solemnity, her eyes
uplifted, her hands clasped before her. Beverley could have sworn that
she was a shining saint, and that he saw an aureole.

"I know," she continued, "that sometime, somewhere, to a very dear
person I promised that I never, never, never would pray any prayer but
that. And I remember almost nothing else about that other life, which
is far off back yonder in the past, I don't know where,--sweet,
peaceful, shadowy; a dream that I have all but lost from my mind."

Beverley's sympathy was deeply moved. He sat for some minutes looking
at her without speaking. She, too, was pensive and silent, while the
fire sputtered and sang, the great logs slowly melting, the flames
tossing wisps of smoke into the chimney still booming to the wind.

"I know, too, that I am