"I left San Francisco several months ago and have been stopping in several places, and that is why your letters were so long in reaching me. They both came in the same mail, and I wrote to San Francisco to see what I could learn with regard to your mother. It seems that the private asylum of Dr. Haynes was broken up, as there were only three patients when Mrs. Smith left, and it did not pay. Soon after your father died in Santa Barbara, your mother was removed from the asylum by a gentleman whose name I have thus far been unable to learn. I thought it must have been some relative, but if you know nothing of it my theory is wrong. Dr. Haynes went at once with his family to Europe, and is travelling on the continent. His address is, Care of Munroe & Co., Bankers, 7 Rue Scribe. Paris. Write him again, as he must know who took your mother from his care. He may not be in Paris now, but your letter will reach him in time. If there is anything I can do to help you, I will gladly do it. If you were in San Francisco you might find some of the attendants in the asylum, who could give you the information you desire.
"Yours, very truly,
"J.P. ALLING, M.D."
It was Ruby who brought the letter one evening two or three days before Eloise expected to make her first appearance in school. Mrs. Biggs and Tim were out and Eloise was alone. Tearing open the envelope, she read it quickly, and then with the bitterest cry Ruby had ever heard, covered her face with her hands and sobbed: "My mother! Oh, my mother!"
"Is she dead?" Ruby asked, and Eloise replied, "Worse than that, perhaps. I don't know where she is. Read what it says."
She gave the letter to Ruby, who read it twice; then, sitting down by Eloise and passing her arm around her, she said, "I don't understand what it means. Was your mother in a lunatic asylum?"
"Oh, don't call it that!" Eloise answered. "It was a private asylum in San Francisco,—very private and select, father said, but I never quite believed her crazy. She was always quiet and sad and peculiar, and hated the business, and so did I."
"What was the business?" Ruby asked, and Eloise answered hesitatingly, as if it were something of which to be ashamed, "She sang in public with a troupe,—his troupe. He made her. She was the star and drew big houses, she was so beautiful and sang so sweetly, without any apparent effort. It was just like a bird, and when she sang the Southern melodies she seemed to be in a trance, seeing things we could not see. It made me cry to hear her. I know many good women are public singers, but mother shrank from it, and when they cheered like mad there used to be a frightened look in her eyes, as if she wondered why they were doing it and wanted to hide, and when she got to our rooms she'd tremble and be so cold and cry, while father sometimes scolded and sometimes laughed at her. He tried to make me sing once. I have a fair voice, but I rebelled and said I'd run away before I'd do it. He was very angry, and sent me North to my grandmother, saying I was too great an expense to keep with him unless I would help, and was a hindrance to my mother, who was always so anxious about me. It nearly killed her to part with me. I was all the comfort she had, she said, and she always called me Baby. Father was not kind to her, and it seemed as if he hated me, and was jealous of mother's love for me. When I heard he was dead, I could not feel badly, as I ought, and did not cry. He was a very handsome man, and very nice with people, who thought my mother a most fortunate woman to have so polished and courteous a husband. They should have seen him as I saw him at times, and heard him swear, as I have heard him, and call her names till she was white as a corpse and fainted. I never saw her turn upon him but once. I had asked her why she didn't leave him and go home, if she had any to go to. That was when I was a little girl.
"'I have no home or friends in all the wide world to go to' she said, and then, with a sneer which was maddening, it meant so much, my father said, 'Ask her who her father was and see if she can tell you.'
"I didn't know then what he meant to insinuate, but mother did, and there came a look into her eyes which frightened me, and her voice was not mother's at all, as she walked straight up to him and said, 'How dare you insult my mother!'
"She looked like an enraged animal, and my father must have been afraid she would attack him, for he tried to soothe her and succeeded at last in doing so. I think there was some mystery about her father and mother, as she would never talk of them. Once I asked her about them, and she said she hadn't any; and she looked so strange that I never asked her again. I knew she was born South, that her people were poor, and her name Harris, and that is all I know, except that no better or lovelier woman ever lived, and if she is really crazy father made her so, and I cannot feel any love for him, or respect. If I ever had any, and I suppose I must have had, he killed it long ago. The first thing I remember of him in Rome, where I was born, he was practising some music with mother,—playing for her while she sang, and I was standing by him, putting my hands on his arm and trying to hum the tune. With a jerk he said to my nurse, 'Take her away and keep her away.'