de T” beside it.  Around her neck was that locket with the gold chain which I have so often shown you, on one side of which is the miniature of the young officer in his most Christian Majesty’s uniform, and on the other a yellow-faded slip of paper with these words:  “Elle est la mienne, quoiqu’elle ne porte pas mou nom.”  “She is mine, although she does not bear my name.”

My grandfather wrote to the owners of ‘La Favourite du Roy’, and likewise directed his English agent to spare nothing in the search for some clew to the child’s identity.  All that he found was that the mother had been entered on the passenger-list as Madame la Farge, of Paris, and was bound for Martinico.  Of the father there was no trace whatever.  The name “la Farge” the agent, Mr. Dix, knew almost to a certainty was assumed, and the coronet on the handkerchief implied that the child was of noble parentage.  The meaning conveyed by the paper in the locket, which was plainly a clipping from a letter, was such that Mr. Carvel never showed it to my mother, and would have destroyed it had he not felt that some day it might aid in solving the mystery.  So he kept it in his strongbox, where he thought it safe from prying eyes.  But my Uncle Grafton, ever a deceitful lad, at length discovered the key and read the paper, and afterwards used the knowledge he thus obtained as a reproach and a taunt against my mother.  I cannot even now write his name without repulsion.

This new member of the household was renamed Elizabeth Carvel, though they called her Bess, and of a course she was greatly petted and spoiled, and ruled all those about her.  As she grew from childhood to womanhood her beauty became talked about, and afterwards, when Mistress Carvel went to the Assembly, a dozen young sparks would crowd about the door of her coach, and older and more serious men lost their heads on her account.

Her devotion to Mr. Carvel was such, however, that she seemed to care but little for the attention she received, and she continued to grace his board and entertain his company.  He fairly worshipped her.  It was his delight to surprise her with presents from England, with rich silks and brocades for gowns, for he loved to see her bravely dressed.  The spinet he gave her, inlaid with ivory, we have still.  And he caused a chariot to be made for her in London, and she had her own horses and her groom in the Carvel livery.

People said it was but natural that she should fall in love with Captain Jack, my father.  He was the soldier of the family, tall and straight and dashing.  He differed from his younger brother Grafton as day from night.  Captain Jack was open and generous, though a little given to rash enterprise and madcap adventure.  He loved my mother from a child.  His friend Captain Clapsaddle loved her too, and likewise Grafton, but it soon became evident that she would marry Captain Jack or nobody.  He was my grandfather’s favourite, and though Mr. Carvel had wished him more