“Tell me the whole,” was the reply, spoken with evident and encouraging approval of the stranger’s mode of address; and the lady sat down in the great chair on one side of the table.  “Be seated; tell me your wish.”

“It is to serve you,” said Elizabeth, a little proudly.  “I have not come to ask favor for myself or mine.  I came across the sea for you and him.”

She spoke now with vehemence, and as she spoke glanced at the portrait in the alcove.  Quickly the eyes of Madeline Desperiers followed hers.  How had this stranger managed to discover what was so securely hidden from the observation of ordinary eyes?  She did not even suspect the light which had illumined that dim recess, and made it brighter to the gazer than the bright garden even.

“This is Foray,” said Elizabeth, exposing now the token that would instantly make all plain and equal between them.  “I should have sent it to you, Madam, when I wrote; but there was more to be done,—­and so I came.  I am Elizabeth Montier.  I am a soldier’s daughter; so, he said, are you.”

The lady’s answer was not at first by speech.  She arose, swiftly as light moves she moved, and brought her guest up to the window of the shadowy room.  Well she scanned the face of Elizabeth.

“Truth,” she murmured.  “It was you that wrote.  You are Truth.  You speak it.  Blessings on you!  Blessings descend upon you from all the saints and heroes who have moved and suffered here!  Do you come from him,—­Stephen Cordier?”

How proudly and how tenderly she spoke that name!  To hear her soothed the heart of Elizabeth Montier,—­soothed her, and made her strong.

“Is that his name?” she asked, pointing to the portrait.  “We call him Manuel.”  She paused a moment, but not for an answer.  Before Madeline could speak, she went on,—­

“If you can hear me, I will tell you of him, and why I am here.”

“Tell me all.  I can bear to hear anything that you can endure to tell.  You are his friend.  I claim you for mine, too.  You came to find me.  Speak.”

This was the utterance of a calm self-knowledge.  By what she had endured, the woman knew what she could yet endure.

Without pause Elizabeth now spoke.  Without interruption the lady listened,—­listened while this young stranger told the life of the past months, in which he was concerned,—­of the garden where she worked and he walked,—­of her father, the musician,—­of their old home near the barracks, and the new home in the prison,—­of the day when he first told her of his country and his love,—­how for him she had written the letter, repeating oftentimes in the narration the very words he had used,—­of his gestures, his looks;—­she was thoughtful of all.

How strangely intelligent in all her communication!  Ah, if it was eager love that hearkened, it was thoughtful love that spoke!

The story, as she told it, was brief; but the voice never faltered in telling the tale, and the eyes of Elizabeth, with constant scrutiny, were upon her listener.  She was satisfied, when, having said all, she paused, and had now no further fear for her own heart’s integrity or of the listener’s constancy.