“Yes, sir.  We come here every day.”

“Where is your mother now?”

“Just on the other side of the fountain.  You can’t see her for the lime-tree.”

“Is your father here, also?” continued the man.

“No, I don’t know where my father is.”  “Is he dead?” “No, sir; mother says he is not dead, and that she hopes he will come home soon.  Oh!  I wish he would come home.  We would all love him so!”

The man rose up quickly, and turning from the child, walked hurriedly away.  Lilly looked after him for a moment or two, and then ran back to her mother.

On the next day Lilly saw the same man sitting under the bronze statue.  He beckoned to her, and she went to him.

“How long have you been in Paris, dear?” he asked.

“A good many weeks,” she replied.

“Are you going to stay much longer?”

“I don’t know.  But mother wants to go home.”

“Do you like to live in Paris?”

“No, sir.  I would rather live at home with mother and Aunt Hannah.”

“You live with Aunt Hannah, then?”

“Yes, sir.  Do you know Aunt Hannah?” and the child looked up wonderingly into the man’s face.

“I used to know her,” he replied.

Just then Lilly heard her mother calling her, and she started and ran away in the direction from which the voice came.  The man’s face grew slightly pale, and he was evidently much agitated.  As he had done on the evening previous, he rose up hastily and walked away.  But in a short time he returned, and appeared to be carefully looking about for some one.  At length he caught sight of Lilly’s mother.  She was sitting with her eyes upon the ground, the child leaning upon her, and looking into her face, which he saw was thin and pale, and overspread with a hue of sadness.  Only for a few moments did he thus gaze upon her, and then he turned and walked hurriedly from the garden.

Mrs. Canning sat alone with her child that evening, in the handsomely-furnished apartments she had hired on arriving in Paris.

“He told you that he knew Aunt Hannah?” she said, rousing up from a state of deep thought.

“Yes, ma.  He said he used to know her.”

“I wonder”—­

A servant opened the door, and said that a gentleman wished to see Mrs. Canning.

“Tell him to walk in,” the mother of Lilly had just power to say.  In breathless suspense she waited for the space of a few seconds, when the man who had spoken to Lilly in the Gardens of the Tuileries entered and closed the door after him.

Mrs. Canning raised her eyes to his face.  It was her husband!  She did not cry out nor spring forward.  She had not the power to do either.

“That’s him now, mother!” exclaimed Lilly.

“It’s your father!” said Mrs. Canning, in a deeply breathed whisper.

The child sprung toward him with a quick bound and was instantly clasped in his arms.