"Very good, sir." Holmes withdrew, leaving the door ajar.
Bertrand remained upon his feet, watching it expectantly.
At the sound of voices on the stairs he smiled involuntarily. But how they were droll--these English ladies! Would he ever accustom himself--
"Miss Wyndham, sir!" It was Holmes again, opening the door wide to usher in the unexpected visitor.
The visitor paused an instant on the threshold, then came briskly forward. "Oh," she said, "are you the organ-grinder?"
He straightened himself with a jerk; he looked at her. And suddenly a cry rang through the room--a cry that came straight from a woman's heart, inarticulate, thrilled through and through with a rapture beyond words. And in a moment Bertrand de Montville, outcast and wanderer on the face of the earth, had shed the bitter burden that weighed him down, had leaped the dark dividing gulf that separated him from the dear land of his dreams, and stood once more upon the sands of Valpré, with a girl's hands fast clasped in his.
"_Mignonne_!" he gasped hoarsely. "_Mignonne_!" And again "_Mignonne_!"
Her answering voice had a break in it--a sound of unshed tears. "Bertie--dear! Bertie--dear!"
The door closed discreetly, and Holmes departed to his own premises. It was no affair of his, he informed himself stolidly; but it was a rum go, and he couldn't help wondering what the master would make of it.
"But why wasn't I told?" said Chris, yet hovering between tears and laughter. "They--Bertie--they said you were an organ-grinder!"
He let her hands go, but his dark eyes still shone with the wonder and the joy of the encounter.
"Ah!" he said. "And they told me--they told me--that you were--" He stopped abruptly with the dazed expression of a man suddenly hit in a vital place. All the light went out of his face. He became silent.
He did not answer at once, and in the pause that ensued he resumed his burden, he re-crossed the gulf, and the sands of Valpré were left very, very far away.
In the pause also she saw him as he was--a man broken before his prime, haggard and tired and old, with the fire of his genius quenched for ever in the bitter waters of adversity.
With an effort he spoke. "It is nothing, _chérie_. You are the same. But with me--all is changed."