Mr. Carmichael looked at him uneasily. He knew that the worst thing the man could do for himself, for his reason and his health, was to begin to think in this particular way of this particular subject.
"If the child at Madame Pascal's school in Paris was the one you are in search of," he answered soothingly, "she would seem to be in the hands of people who can afford to take care of her. They adopted her because she had been the favorite companion of their little daughter who died. They had no other children, and Madame Pascal said that they were extremely well-to-do Russians."
"And the wretched woman actually did not know where they had taken her!" exclaimed Mr. Carrisford.
Mr. Carmichael shrugged his shoulders.
"She was a shrewd, worldly Frenchwoman, and was evidently only too glad to get the child so comfortably off her hands when the father's death left her totally unprovided for. Women of her type do not trouble themselves about the futures of children who might prove burdens. The adopted parents apparently disappeared and left no trace."
"But you say 'if' the child was the one I am in search of. You say 'if.' We are not sure. There was a difference in the name."
"Madame Pascal pronounced it as if it were Carew instead of Crewe,—but that might be merely a matter of pronunciation. The circumstances were curiously similar. An English officer in India had placed his motherless little girl at the school. He had died suddenly after
