Making a desperate effort to recover from the stunning blow, he faltered out, "I heard that you made Mademoiselle de Gramont a proposition to"—
"To become my humble companion? Yes, I did so at the request of Count Damoreau. But she definitely declined, and I felt much relieved, for she was entirely too handsome for that position. Shortly afterward I heard of a young person who suited me much better. I thought it was a mistake of the footman's, last night, when he said you desired to see the young lady who accompanied me. It was somewhat singular to have one's humble companion included in a visit to one's self! Now I comprehend that you thought she was your cousin. I hope you are feeling better; your color is coming again."
Maurice was not listening. He had lost Madeleine anew. The agony of a second bereavement, the mystery that enveloped her fate, the dreadful uncertainty of tracing her, pressed upon him and rent his soul with fiercer throes than before. Muttering some hurried apology, he rose, staggered toward the door, and, to the amazement of the stoical footman, who was greatly scandalized thereby, the pertinacious stranger fairly reeled past him into the street.
CHAPTER XI.
PURSUIT.
Maurice, when he took his abrupt leave of Lady Vivian, did not return to the hotel. He felt as though he could not breathe, could not exist, shut within four walls, with the oppressive weight of his new disappointment crushing and stifling his spirit. He traversed the streets with a rapid pace, not knowing nor caring whither he went, if he only kept in motion. His own torturing thoughts pursued him like haunting fiends, driving him mercilessly hither and thither, and he sped onward and onward, as though by increased celerity he could fly from his intangible persecutors.
Now sprang up the tantalizing suggestion, that, as Lady Vivian had never seen Madeleine, the latter had presented herself under a feigned name, for the sake of concealing her rank, and baffling the friends who sought to discover her abode. Was not that very possible, very natural? He recalled the tall, finely-moulded form, of which he had caught a glimpse in Lady Langdon's salon, and for awhile he cherished this chimera; then its place was usurped by one more painful: Madeleine was perhaps travelling alone, subjected by her very beauty to the curious scrutiny, the heartless insults of brutal men; and, perchance, through her ignorance of the world, trapped into some snare from which she could never be extricated unharmed. Then his mind was filled with the horrible idea that, in her friendliness and despair, finding no place of refuge on earth, she had flung away her burdensome life with violent hands. Nothing was more improbable than that a being endowed with her self-controlled, serene, sorrow-accepting temperament, should be driven to such an act of unholy madness. Yet Maurice allowed the frightful fantasy to work within his brain until it clothed itself with a shape like reality, and drove him to the verge of distraction.
Where could she have gone? Where? oh, where?