I
It is two years to a day since John Dampier disappeared, and it is only owing to one man's inflexible determination that the search for him has not been abandoned long ago.
And now we meet Senator Burton far in body, if not in mind, from the place where we last met him.
He is standing by an open window, gazing down on one of the fairest sights civilised nature has to offer—that of an old English garden filled with fragrant flowers which form scented boundaries of soft brilliant colour to wide lawns shaded by great cedar trees.
But as he stands there in the early morning sunlight, for it is only six o'clock, he does not look in harmony with the tranquil beauty of the scene before him. There is a stern, troubled expression on his face, for he has just espied two figures walking side by side across the dewy grass; the one is his son Gerald, the other Nancy Dampier, still in the delicate and dangerous position of a woman who is neither wife, maid, nor widow.
The Senator's whole expression has changed in the two years. He used to look a happy, contented man; now, especially when he is alone and his face is in repose, he has the disturbed, bewildered expression men's faces bear when Providence or Fate—call it which you will—has treated them in a way they feel to be unbearably unfair, as well as unexpected.
And yet the majority of mankind would consider this American to be supremely blessed. The two children he loves so dearly are as fondly attached to him as ever they were; and there has also befallen him a piece of quite unexpected good fortune. A distant relation, from whom he had no expectations, has left him a fortune "as a token of admiration for his high integrity."
Senator Burton is now a very rich man, and because Daisy fancied it would please her brother they have taken for the summer this historic English manor house, famed all the world over to those interested in mediaeval architecture, as Barwell Moat.
Here he, Daisy, and Nancy Dampier have already been settled for a week;
Gerald only joined them yesterday from Paris.
Early though it is, the Senator has already been up and dressed over an hour; and he has spent the time unprofitably, in glancing over his diary of two years ago, in conning, that is, the record of that strange, exciting fortnight which so changed his own and his children's lives.