'Pray, sit down, Simone.'

It was Colonel Sampson's voice, even and decorous, that broke in on the strained silence. He drew a chair up to the oaken table as he spoke. Simone obeyed, holding a hand out as if for support. Marion took the hand and held it, gently passing her own palm across the trembling fingers. Motioning Victoire into the room, Mrs. Curnow quietly shot the bolt and latched the other door that gave on to the kitchen passages. Mistress Keziah looked curiously from face to face, then with a slight gesture she turned to Colonel Sampson.

Bending over Simone, whose eyes never left the woman at the door, Sampson spoke.

'Tell us, if you can, my dear, who this woman is.'

'My nurse,' instantly replied Simone.

'Your nurse?' repeated Mistress Keziah in a clear, steady voice. 'You are not mistaken?' She looked from Marion who, speechless, was staring at Victoire, to Sampson. The Colonel nodded once or twice, with a smile. Simone leaned her brow on her hand for a minute, then looked up at him. Her whole face was transformed.

'I can remember!' she cried, springing up. 'Oh, I can remember!' She pressed her fingers to her cheeks, staring beyond the room into the past.

'Remember what, Simone dear?' said Marion in a trembling voice, forcing the girl gently into her chair.

Simone's low voice broke on a hysterical note. 'But,' she cried, 'I am not Simone. Did I not say I have just remembered? I have been trying all my life to remember. I am not Simone. I am Elise.'

Marion stepped back, her grey eyes wide. She looked appealingly at her aunt; but that lady, her gaze bent on Simone, appeared to be making a reckoning and a remembrance on her own account. Sampson still smiled from the window seat.

Marion looked again from Simone to the woman who stood, her mouth closed tight, by the door. What could have happened to affect Simone's mind thus?

'But,' she faltered, 'Elise is upstairs in her room. Are there two Elises?'

'I told my brother,' rang out Mistress Keziah's clear voice, 'I told my brother yonder girl was not a de Delauret. Had your nurse a child, my dear?' she asked, turning to Simone.

'Why, yes,' said Simone slowly. 'Let me see now. What was she called? Wait a minute. I have it! Suzanne Marie. We used to play together. How clear it is all growing!'

There was a curious pause. Marion stepped forward, a strange look on her colourless face.

'Then Suzanne Marie is upstairs,' triumphantly said Mistress Keziah. 'The whole thing is clear.'

A wail broke from Marion's lips. 'I cannot understand it. Aunt Keziah, are we all going mad?'

Simone, staring across at Victoire, seemed not to hear, and Sampson, watching the girl, saw that she was slowly linking together the scattered chain of her memories.

'The woman Victoire will doubtless explain,' said Mistress Keziah. 'I told your father there was some hideous mystery. The whole village knew. Any one else but my brother would have known. The woman just put her own child in Simone's place.'

Again a stupefied silence fell on the room. There was no word from the woman at the door.

Quite suddenly Marion burst into tears.

'It is horrible,' she said. 'Horrible! Have I been all these years playing and sleeping and eating with some one called Suzanne Marie, and the real Elise starving in London? Simone,'—she threw her arms round the girl's neck,—'forgive me, forgive us.'

Mistress Keziah's old eyes watered as she looked at the girl who had always been so self-controlled. 'My darling,' she said, 'it was not your fault.'

'I cannot bear it!' cried Marion. 'And I care not who sees me weep. Romaine says she found Simone in a fearful state in a gutter in Crutched Friars. She had been so dreadfully treated that she nearly died. Then when Romaine had nursed her back to health she could not remember anything.'

'No,' broke in Simone's toneless voice. 'No. But I remember now. Dear Marion, do not be unhappy.'

'I cannot help but be unhappy,' said Marion, drying her eyes. 'We ought to have found out. Somebody ought to have done something. Think of it, Aunt Keziah, Simone working in London, stitching all day for a bit of food. I cannot bear it.' Marion sat down and buried her face in her hands.

'My lamb,' said Mrs. Curnow gently, 'doan't 'ee take on so, doan't 'ee now.'

'Poor Simone,' said Marion in a strangled voice as she wrestled for composure, 'and left in a gutter to die! And that hard life! And she would have been so happy at Garth.'

Simone's low voice here broke in; Simone had grown curiously still. One would have said she was a detached spectator of affairs that concerned other people.

'Why did you do it, Victoire?'

Victoire's mouth tightened to a still harder line.

'Why did you do it?' repeated Simone. 'Were you not well treated as my nurse?'

'I can tell you that,' said Sampson. 'Victoire wanted the estates for her own child.'

Simone turned round in her chair.

'What estates, M. le Colonel? It is all quite clear to me now—my memory, I mean. My father told me when he was very ill, just before he died, that I was to go to England with Victoire and live with a very dear friend of his until I was grown up. He said nothing of estates. In fact, I always thought we were poor. But then, I was only a child of eight.'

'Your mother inherited lands from her father's family, my dear. Your grandfather's direct heir died. You are the inheritor of his estate. Victoire knew that.'

'I see,' said Simone. 'I can see it all. So that was why my nurse, to my great delight, brought little Suzanne Mar............