There is always some good in the worst of us. But there are times when it is difficult to find the little spark of goodness; it is so small, so carefully hidden in the unexplored depths of some natures that only the blind faith of the searcher may discover it.
Now, no one had ever been troubled to search for the spark in the Duke of Kilkenty’s nature,—that is, not since the death of his second wife. His stepmother, the Dowager Duchess, had long ago washed her hands of him.
“He always wants the things he can’t have and he never likes the things he can have,” she used to say of him.
Neither of his two marriages had been happy. The second Duchess of Kilkenty, mother of little Arthur, was of humble extraction, it was said. No one knew exactly where she came from, but those who had seen her said she was beautiful. It was rumored that she had been glad to die and had had only one wish: to take her little boy with her.
The Duke of Kilkenty was fond of his eldest son, Lord Maxwell Douglas, but apparently he had not a ray of affection for the delicate, whimsical little Lord Arthur, whom he left entirely to the care of incompetent tutors and a scheming physician.
And now the little Lord Arthur was lost. Detectives all over the kingdom had been searching for him for weeks. Some believed he had been carried off to America; others believed he was dead, and still others forgot all about it, because the English papers, after the first outburst of news, had respected the wishes of the Duke of Kilkenty and the police and had printed little on the subject.
Arthur had dropped out of the world of his father and the people about him so completely that it almost seemed that his poor mother had had her wish at last. He had left not so much as a ripple on the surface when he had plunged out of sight, and it was a false scent that had lured the detectives first to Ireland and then to Scotland.
Was he concealed in one of the thousands of hiding places in the maze of London lodging houses? What had been the motive of his kidnapping? Was it out of revenge or for money? The strangest thing about it all was that the Duke had offered no reward.
One night toward the middle of July this extremely unpopular person lay tossing on his bed. He had paid a flying visit to his estates in Ireland, hoping to find a little rest. For weeks he had slept only a few hours at a time. His soul seemed to be groping in blackness and a dreadful sickening depression benumbed his senses. To-night, like many a night before, he lay thinking and thinking, not of Arthur, but of Arthur’s mother. He seemed to see her face in the darkness. It was beautiful and delicate like the child’s. The Duke closed his eyes, but he could not shut out the vision. It hovered over him appealingly, reproachfully. He tossed and turned, and at last he rose, flung on his dressing-gown and stalked down to the library, carrying a lighted candle and making a ghostly figure in the great room, with the sputtering light held high above his head. He switched on an electric light, unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out a packet of letters tied with a piece of red tape. Among the letters which fell apart when the tape was loosened was a photograph. It was the same face which had hovered about him in the darkness. The reproachful eyes looked straight into his, and there was a pathetic droop at the corners of the mouth.
“Poor little thing,” he muttered to himself. “Poor little Maddelina! Strange that I have never looked at the picture in all these years, not since she died, and I feel as moved by it to-night as I did the first time I saw her.” He fingered the letters absently and opened one or two. They were signed “Your loving Maddelina.”