The rector was hurt and wounded by all this, and while he resented the intimation from another that Miss Irving’s conduct had been peculiar and mysterious, he felt it to be so in his own heart.
“Is it her mother’s tendency to adventure developing in her?” he asked himself.
Yet he wrote her a letter, directing it to her at the old number, thinking she would at least leave her address with the post-office for the forwarding of mail. The letter was returned to him from that cemetery of many a dear hope, the dead-letter office. A personal in a leading paper failed to elicit a reply. And then one day six months after the disappearance of Joy Irving, the young rector was called to the Cheney household to offer spiritual consolation to Miss Alice, who believed herself to be dying. She had been in a decline ever since the rector went away for his health.
Since his return she had seen him but seldom, rarely save in the pulpit, and for the last six weeks she had been too ill to attend divine service.
It was Preston Cheney himself, at home upon one of his periodical visits, who sent for the rector, and gravely met him at the door when he arrived, and escorted him into his study.
“I am very anxious about my daughter,” he said. “She has been a nervous child always, and over-sensitive. I returned yesterday after an absence of some three months in California, to find Alice in bed, wasted to a shadow, and constantly weeping. I cannot win her confidence—she has never confided to me. Perhaps it is my fault; perhaps I have not been at home enough to make her realise that the relationship of father and daughter is a sacred one. This morning when I was urging her to tell me what grieved her, she remarked that there was but one person to whom she could communicate this sorrow—her rector. So, my dear Dr Stuart, I have sent for you. I will conduct you to my child, and I leave her in your hands. Whatever comfort and consolation you can offer, I know will be given. I hope she will not bind you to secrecy; I hope you may be able to tell me what troubles her, and advise me how to help her.”
It was more than an hour before the rector returned to the library where Preston Cheney awaited him. When the senator heard his approaching step, he looked up, and was startled to see the pallor on the young man’s face. “You have something sad, something terrible to tell me!” he cried. “What is it?”
The rector walked across the room several times, breathing deeply, and with anguish written on his countenance. Then he took Senator Cheney’s hand and wrung it. “I have an embarrassing announcement to make to you,” he said. “It is something so surprising, so unexpected, that I am completely unnerved.”
“You alarm me, more and more,” the senator answered. “What can be the secret which my frail child has imparted to you that should so distress you? Speak; it is my right to know.”
The rector took another turn about the room, and then came and stood facing Senator Cheney.