The vicar had not yet returned, so day followed day with her, aimlessly and hopelessly.
She thought the public prints could give her no further tidings now. She knew not where to seek for intelligence, and could but wait, dumbly, expectantly, and count the hours as they drifted wearily past, in the desperate longing that some tidings would reach her at some time of her dearest, it might be now her dead, one!
The Parks were completely empty then; the sunshine was pleasant and warm for the season; the grass was green and beautiful; and lured thereby one forenoon, the pale girl went forth for a little air, when there occurred an extraordinary catastrophe that, in her present weakened state of mind and body, was fully calculated to destroy her!
The afternoon passed—the evening and the night too, yet she did not as usual return to her humble lodging. The morning dawned without a trace of her; the landlady began to appraise her few effects; the landlord shook his head, winked knowingly, and said, 'She was far too pretty to live alone,' and deemed it the old story over again—a waif lost in London.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE TERRIBLE MISTAKE.
Dulcie had thought that no possible harm could accrue to her from rambling or sitting in that beautiful Park alone, and watching the children playing with their hoops along the gravelled walk. With whom could she go? She had no one to escort her. She knew not that it was not quite etiquette for a young lady to be there alone and unattended; but the event that occurred to her was one which she could never have anticipated.
She had sat for some time, absorbed in her own thoughts, on one of the rustic sofas not far from Stanhope Gate, all unaware that an odd-looking and mean-looking, but carefully dressed little man had been hovering near her, and observing her closely with his keen small ferret-like eyes, and with an expression of deep interest, destitute, however, of the slightest admiration, and with a kind of sardonic and stereotyped smile in which mirth bore no part.
He scanned her features from time to time, grinned to himself, and ever and anon consulted something concealed in his hand.
'Golden hair—sealskin jacket—sable muff—hat and feather—a silver necklet—all right,' he muttered, and then he advanced close towards her.