morning.
It could be seen from her signals that the ship was living throughout the
night, but at dawn she foundered before the Sally's boats could be put in
the water; one of them was ground to pieces on the falls. Out of the
ship's company and passengers they picked up but five souls, four sailors
and a little girl of two years or thereabouts. The men knew nothing more
of her than that she had come aboard at Brest with her mother, a quiet,
delicate lady who spoke little with the other passengers. The ship was
'La Favourite du Roy', bound for the French Indies.

Captain Stanwix's wife, who was a good, motherly person, took charge of
the little orphan, and arriving at Carvel Hall delivered her to my
grandfather, who brought her up as his own daughter. You may be sure the
emblem of Catholicism found upon her was destroyed, and she was baptized
straightway by Doctor Hilliard, my grandfather's chaplain, into the
Established Church. Her clothes were of the finest quality, and her
little handkerchief had worked into the corner of it a coronet, with the
initials "E de T" beside it. Around her neck was that locket with the
gold chain which I have so often shown you, on one side of which is the
miniature of the young officer in his most Christian Majesty's uniform,
and on the other a yellow-faded slip of paper with these words: "Elle est
la mienne, quoiqu'elle ne porte pas mou nom." "She is mine, although she
does not bear my name."

My grandfather wrote to the owners of 'La Favourite du Roy', and likewise
directed his English agent to spare nothing in the search for some clew
to the child's identity. All that he found was that the mother had been
entered on the passenger-list as Madame la Farge, of Paris, and was bound
for Martinico. Of the father there was no trace whatever. The name "la
Farge" the agent, Mr. Dix, knew almost to a certainty was assumed, and
the coronet on the handkerchief implied that the child was of noble
parentage. The meaning conveyed by the paper in the locket, which was
plainly a clipping from a letter, was such that Mr. Carvel never showed
it to my mother, and would have destroyed it had he not felt that some
day it might aid in solving the mystery. So he kept it in his strongbox,
where he thought it safe from prying eyes. But my Uncle Grafton, ever a
deceitful lad, at length discovered the key and read the paper, and
afterwards used the knowledge he thus obtained as a reproach and a taunt
against my