"What has happened to Althea? Is she sick?" asked Dan, alarmed.
"We have lost her, Dan."
"Lost her! You don't mean she is——"
He couldn't finish the sentence, but his mother divined what he meant.
"Not dead, thank God!" she said, "but she has disappeared—she has been stolen."
"You don't mean it, mother!" exclaimed Dan, startled and grieved. "Tell me about it."
Mrs. Mordaunt told what she knew, but that related only to the particulars of the abduction. We are in a position to tell the reader more, but it will be necessary to go back for a month, and transfer the scene to another continent.
In a spacious and handsomely furnished apartment at the West End of London sat the lady who had placed Althea in charge of the Mordaunts. She was deep in thought, and that not of an agreeable nature.
"I fear," she said to herself, "that trouble awaits me. John Hartley, whom I supposed to be in California, is certainly in London. I cannot be mistaken in his face, and I certainly saw him in Hyde Park to-day. Did he see me? I don't know, but I fear he did. If so, he will not long delay in making his appearance. Then I shall be persecuted, but I must be firm. He shall not learn through me where Althea is. He is her father, it is true, but he has forfeited all claim to her guardianship. A confirmed gambler and drunkard, he would soon waste her fortune, bequeathed her by her poor mother. He can have no possible claim to it; for, apart from his having had no hand in leaving it to her, he was divorced from my poor sister before her death."