CHAPTER LXII.
If Norman believes that the spell of his love is strong enough to trace Sweetheart in her flight, he is mistaken. Days elapse, and he has not found the first clew. If she has left the city, he can not ascertain by what route, and if she is still in Jacksonville, she is hidden so cleverly that a private detective can not find her out. She is quite gone out of her husband’s life—gone as mysteriously as she had come into it first sixteen years ago a little golden-haired fairy.
A chill runs over him as the fact strikes him. There had always been a mystery about Sweetheart’s origin. Would the same mystery follow her disappearance? Beautiful and gifted beyond most mortals, was she some fairy changeling lent him awhile to brighten his life, then snatched away forever to her immortal sphere? He had never been accounted superstitious, but a thrill of fear ran over him as he recalled a pretty Shetland fairy-tale he had often read, wherein the fairy bride, won at first from the sea, had deserted her husband and returned to her home among the coral caves:
“Days of delight
Among my gorgeous coral halls,
Where never a child’s footstep falls,
Never is heard one loving voice,
But all is mirth and mad rejoice.”
He swept his white hand wearily across his brow as if to clear away these mists of fancy.
“Sweetheart, you never would have deserted me!” he cried, in his anguish. “Oh, my love, my love, come back to me!”