She discovered that her father had assumed a certain name; she found that the bearer of this name was a wandering man, a conjuror by trade; she pursued the vague traces of his progress from town to town, from county to county, sometimes losing, sometimes regaining the scattered links.  Sir, he was my father—­I am that Hortense.  I have spent my life seeking him—­I have lived for this one hope.  I have traced his footsteps here to Saxonholme, and here the last clue fails.  If you know anything—­if you can remember anything—–­”

Calm and collected as she had been at first, she was trembling now, and her voice died away in sobs.  The firelight fell upon her face—­upon the face of my lost love!

I also was profoundly agitated.

“Hortense,” I said, “do you not know, that he who stood beside your father in his last hour, and he who so loved you years ago, are one and the same?  Alas! why did you not tell me these things long since?”

“Did you stand beside my father’s deathbed?” she asked brokenly.

“I did.”

She clasped her hands over her eyes and shuddered, as if beneath the pressure of a great physical pain.

“O God!” she murmured, “so many years of denial and suffering! so many years of darkness that might have been dispelled by a word!”

We were both silent for a long time.  Then I told her all that I remembered of her father; how he came to Saxonholme—­how he fell ill—­how he died, and was buried.  It was a melancholy recital; painful for me to relate—­painful for her to hear—­and interrupted over and over again by questions and tears, and bursts of unavailing sorrow.

“We will visit his grave to-morrow,” I said, when all was told.

She bent her head.

“To-morrow, then,” said she, “I end the pilgrimage of years.”

“And—­and afterwards?” I faltered.

“Afterwards?  Alas! friend, when the hopes of years fall suddenly to dust and ashes, one feels as if there were no future to follow?”

“It is true,” I said gloomily.  “I know it too well.”

“You know it?” she exclaimed, looking up.

“I know it, Hortense.  There was a moment in which all the hope, and the fulness, and the glory of my life went down at a blow.  Have you not heard of ships that have gone to the bottom in fair weather, suddenly, with all sail set, and every hand on board?”

She looked at me with a strange earnestness in her eyes, and sighed heavily.

“What have you been doing all this time, fellow-student?” she asked, after a pause.

The old name sounded very sweet upon her lips!

“I?  Alas!—­nothing.”

“But you are a surgeon, are you not?”

“No.  I never even went up for examination.  I gave up all idea of medicine as a profession when my father died.”

“What are you, then?”

“An idler upon the great highway—­a book-dreamer—­a library fixture.”