There was nothing suspicious here. It was evidently the sleeping apartment of the two dead people below who would never need it more.
A bed and two chairs constituted the sole furnishing. Some cheap articles of feminine apparel hung upon pegs against the wall, together with one or two rusty old coats and a pair of pants that doubtless belonged to the man he had seen below.
"There is nothing hidden here," thought Mr. Shelton, leaving it and entering the next room.
This room was similar to the first one. A bed and several chairs were all it contained. A single article of feminine apparel hung against the wall.
It was a dress of summer blue, and made in a more fashionable style than the one which he had seen in the adjoining room.
Like a flash he remembered that Mrs. Mason had told him, when describing the appearance of the girl she had befriended, that she wore a "morning dress of a light-blue color, and fashionably made."
"Great Heavens!" he thought, "is it possible that the poor creature escaped from this very house? If so, then she was recaptured and brought back, for here hangs the dress that Mrs. Mason described. My God! what has become of the wearer! Has some fearful fate befallen her?"
Echo only answered him as he sat down trembling with excitement.
He was here in the room where sweet Lily Lawrence had dragged out weary months of captivity, sickness and sorrow; where her pure cheeks had burned at insult and wrong, where she had suffered the pangs of hunger and cold until her weakened frame had almost succumbed to the grim destroyer, death.
But it was silent and deserted now. The dead ashes strewed the hearth, the empty robe hung against the wall, and the cold October wind sighing past the iron-barred window did not whisper of the tender heart that had ached so drearily within.