When daylight came Owen and Herrick resumed their search for the missing girl, calling to their aid every device which the wit of man could suggest.
They left no stone unturned; and though Owen shrank from the necessary publicity Scotland Yard was informed, and a huge reward offered for information about the vanished Toni.
But the days passed, glided into weeks, which in their turn grew into months; and Toni was not found.
CHAPTER XXVII
On a sunny afternoon in March of the following year, Toni Rose sat alone on the slope of an Italian hill-side overlooking the blue Mediterranean, which lay stretched beneath her like a sheet of living turquoise.
The air was delightfully warm and still, and scented with the fresh breath of myriads of violets which dotted the short, soft turf here and there like a multitude of tiny purple stars. Everywhere the almond blossom was in its full beauty of rose and cream, and the sight of an orchard away on the hill-side, with the faint blue sky above the pink-and-white branches, and the bluer sea behind, gave to the beholder the effect of a delicate Japanese water-colour painting.
The Bay of Naples fully deserved its world-wide reputation for beauty on this bright spring afternoon. Across its waters rose hill upon hill, the sombre giant Vesuvius brooding like some dark monster over the ruined countryside at its base, the lovelier, more hopeful snow-crowned peaks behind rising like a fairy army beneath whose beneficent gaze the ogre was—for the time—vanquished and impotent.
The bay was full of craft, as usual. Big liners, tramp steamers, a grey battleship or two, looked scornfully down on the little Italian boats, some piled high with yellow fruit, others less imposing, little pleasure craft manned by youthful boatmen with swarthy brown faces and ears ornamented with huge golden rings.
Land and sea alike smiled in the glorious sunshine. It was a day on which life seemed a very sweet and desirable opportunity; but in Toni's face there was no hint of gladness, none of her former almost pagan delight in the beautiful out-of-door world around her.