is door?" she asked, pointing to it as he overtook her.

Witch she might be, but why should he give away to her this innocent
small secret?

"Of course I remember it," he answered; "passing it as I do,
half-a-dozen times a day."

"Yes," she said, almost as if speaking to herself; but her voice, for
the first time since their meeting, seemed to be touched with a faint
shade of dejection. "Naturally you would not remember it for any other
reason."

He was silent.

"Yet," she went on, "you really ought to remember that door, Major
Vigoureux, if only for old sake's sake; for it was, I believe, the
first you entered when you came to the Islands. That was in the
year----"

"Never mind the year," interrupted the Commandant, hastily. "I remember
it well. I almost never pass the door without remembering it."

"Ah!" she cried, putting her jewelled hands together, and the
Commandant took it for an exclamation of triumph at her cleverness.
"But other tenants have the house. The man who was master of it is
dead."

"You know everything, it seems to me. Yes; he was a widower, and late
that evening at the fishing. It was an evening when he should not have
been late; for the door stood open for him, and his daughters--he had
two daughters--sat expecting him. It was the open door that drew me to
ask my way." Here he paused.

"Go on, please."

"One of the girls was to leave the Islands next morning for the
mainland, which she had never seen. She told me this. And she sat
reading aloud to her sister, there by the fire."

"Go on."

"That is all. Yes, that is all--except that the book was Shakespeare,
and the girl--" He paused again, staring at her between sudden
enlightenment and stark incredulity. "You--you don't mean to tell me
_you_ were that girl!"

She nodded; and as, forgetting politeness, he held the lantern close to
her face, he saw two large tears brim up, tremble, and hang for a
second before they fell.

"You?" he murmured.

She nodded again. "I am Vashti--Vazzy Cara, they called me, Philip
Cara's daughter. I daresay, though, you never heard my name? No, there
is no reason why you should. And my sister, Ruth----"

"She is married and lives on Saaron Island. But you know this, of
course? You who seem to know everything about us."

"My sister writes me all the news.... So now," she added smiling, "it
is all explained, and there is no mystery about me after all. Are you
so very much disappointed?"

But the