gold and enameled, which from what I’ve read since I suppose must have been the crest of the Des Violets.
“And what did Mr. Gabriel say then?” I asked, giving it back to Faith, who put her head into the old position again.
“O, he acted real queer! Talked French, too,—O, so fast! ‘The very man!’ then he cried out. ‘The man himself! His portrait,—I have seen it a hundred times!’ And then he told me that about a dozen years ago or more, a ship sailed from—from—I forget the place exactly, somewhere up there where he came from,—Mr. Gabriel, I mean,—and among the passengers was this man and his wife, and his little daughter, whose name was Virginie des Violets, and the ship was never heard from again. But he says that without a doubt I’m the little daughter and my name is Virginie, though I suppose everyone’ll call me Faith. O, and that isn’t the queerest! The queerest is, this gentleman,“ and Faith lifted her head, “was very rich. I can’t tell you how much he owned. Lands that you can walk on a whole day and not come to the end, and ships, and gold. And the whole of it’s lying idle and waiting for an heir,—and I, Georgie, am the heir.”
And Faith told it with cheeks burning and eyes shining, but yet quite as if she’d been born and brought up in the knowledge.
“It don’t seem to move you much, Faith,” said I, perfectly amazed, although I’d frequently expected something of the kind.
“Well, I may never get it, and so on. If I do, I’ll give you a silk dress and set you up in a bookstore. But here’s a queerer thing yet. Des Violets is the way Mr. Gabriel’s own name is spelt, and his father and mine—his mother and—Well, some way or other we’re sort of cousins. Only think, Georgie! isn’t that—I thought, to be sure, when he quartered at our house, Dan’d begin to take me to do, if I looked at him sideways,—make the same fuss that he does if I nod to any of the other young men.”
“I don’t think Dan speaks before he should, Faith.”
“Why don’t you say Virginie?” says she, laughing.
“Because Faith you’ve always been, and Faith you’ll have to remain, with us, to the end of the chapter.”
“Well, that’s as it may be. But Dan can’t object now to my going where I’m a mind to with my own cousin!” And here Faith laid her ear on the ball of yarn again.
“Hasten, headsman!” said she, out of a novel, “or they’ll wonder where I am.”
“Well,” I answered, “just let me run the needle through the emery.”
“Yes, Georgie,” said Faith, going back with her memories while I sharpened my steel, “Mr. Gabriel and I are kin. And he said that the moment he laid eyes on me he knew I was of different blood from the rest of the people—”
“What people?” asked I.
“Why, you, and Dan, and all these. And he said he was struck to stone when he heard I was married to Dan—I must have been entrapped—the 

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