“Oh, I’m so glad,” said Alice when they were at a safe distance from the house. “I was afraid they’d take it back,” and she held fast to the kitten, which made no effort to escape, but lay in her arms, singing occasionally as if well pleased with the exchange.
This, however, Frederic knew would not continue until they reached home, and stepping into a shop which they were passing, he bought a covered basket, in which the cat was placed and the lid secured, a proceeding not altogether satisfactory to the prisoner. Alice, too, was equally distressed, and when she learned that Frederic could not go home until night, she insisted upon his getting her a room at the Astor, where she could let her treasure out without fear of its escaping. Frederic complied with her request, and in her delight with her new pet, she half forgot how disappointed she had been in the result of their visit. But not so with Frederic. He felt it keenly, for never had his hopes of finding Marian been raised to a higher pitch than that morning, and even now he could not give it up. Leaving Alice at the hotel he went back again to the street and made the most minute inquiries, but all to no purpose. He could not obtain the least clue to her, and he retraced his steps with a feeling that she was as really lost to him as if Sarah Green’s letter had been true and Marian resting in her grave.
“Why had that letter been written?” he asked himself again and again.
Somebody knew of Marian, and there was a mystery connected with it—a mystery of wrong it might be. Perhaps she could not come back, even though she wanted to, and his pulses quickened with painful rapidity as he thought of all the imaginary terrors which might surround the lost one. It was indeed a sad reflection, and his spirits were unusually depressed, when just before sunset he took Alice by one hand, the basket in the other, and started for home.
“I didn’t think we should come back alone,” said Alice, when at last they reached the depot at Yonkers, and she was lifted into the carriage waiting for them. “It’s dreadful we couldn’t find her, but I am so glad we’ve got the cat;” and she guarded the basket carefully, as if it had contained the diamonds of India.
Frederic did not care to talk, and folding his arms, he leaned moodily back in his carriage, evincing no interest in anything until as they drew near home, the driver said to Alice:
“Guess who’s come?”
“Oh, I don’t know—Dinah, may be,” was Alice’s reply, and then Frederic smiled at the preposterous idea.
“No; guess again,” said the driver. “Somebody as handsome as a doll.”
“Miss Grey!” cried Alice, almost upsetting her basket in her delight.