“You cannot see her until her return. She is out looking for her child. She is always out looking for him. She takes a cab at daylight in the morning, and drives out through the narrow streets and lanes of the city, keeping watch all the time from the cab windows, entering into all the houses she is permitted to visit, inquiring of the people about her lost child, offering them heavy rewards for his recovery, pointing them to the posters in which his person is described and the great reward offered and setting as many people as she can at work to search for him. Twenty hours out of the twenty-four she spends in this way.”
“But this will kill her.”
“I think it will. She scarcely eats, drinks or sleeps. She does nothing but look for her child and weep and pray. When she has worn out a cab-horse, she comes back here to get a fresh one; and then I make her drink a little tea or coffee. At twelve or one o’clock in the night, when the houses are all shut up, she comes back here and throws herself down upon the bed to watch and pray, and perhaps to swoon into a sleep of prostration that lasts till morning. Then at four or five o’clock she is up and away upon the search.”
“Poor child! poor child! such a life will certainly soon kill her.”
“I sometimes think the sooner it does so the better for her. Her misery makes my heart bleed. I wonder how any woman can suffer the intense anguish of suspense she endures and live and keep her senses.”
“Anna, why do you not accompany her when she goes out?” inquired Dick, with some surprise.
“Why, don’t you suppose that I do? What do you take me for, Dick? I have always gone with her until this last trip. When we returned home at four o’clock, to get a fresh horse, she took it into her poor head that you and uncle would certainly arrive by the five o’clock train from Southampton, and so she made me stay to receive you.”
“And, you say, Anna, that Alick is suspected of being concerned in this abduction?”
“Yes, but I do not know that Drusilla suspects him very strongly now. Pina first suggested it, and we seized on the idea with eagerness. It was so much more comforting to think that he was safe with his father than in danger anywhere else.”
“But, you see, that is impossible. His father is lying seriously wounded, several hundred miles away.”