About fifteen years before this night some one had brought to the
orphan asylum connected with this convent, du Sacre Coeur, a
round, dimpled bit of three-year-old humanity, who regarded the
world from a pair of gravely twinkling black eyes, and only took
a chubby thumb out of a rosy mouth long enough to answer in
monosyllabic French. It was a child without an identity; there
was but one name that any one seemed to know, and that, too, was
vague,--Camille.

She grew up with the rest of the waifs; scraps of French and
American civilization thrown together to develop a seemingly
inconsistent miniature world. Mademoiselle Camille was a queen
among them, a pretty little tyrant who ruled the children and
dominated the more timid sisters in charge.

One day an awakening came. When she was fifteen, and almost
fully ripened into a glorious tropical beauty of the type that
matures early, some visitors to the convent were fascinated by
her and asked the Mother Superior to give the girl into their
keeping.

Camille fled like a frightened fawn into the yard, and was only
unearthed with some difficulty from behind a group of palms.
Sulky and pouting, she was led into the parlour, picking at her
blue pinafore like a spoiled infant.

"The lady and gentleman wish you to go home with them, Camille,"
said the Mother Superior, in the language of the convent. Her
voice was kind and gentle apparently; but the child, accustomed