“Fair Fielding loved another man—that was why, and she never would have married that wretch, only for her mother’s sake. Now Mrs. Fielding is dead and gone, Fair has only herself to please, and she wouldn’t live with Carl Bernicci, not if he was a king,” she said, quoting from Fair’s journal, which she had read and wept over many times.
Prince Gonzaga did not leave New York immediately. He suspected that his runaway wife was in hiding there, and he stayed on for several months. The working girls at the factory kept up to some extent with his movements, and they declared that he had a private detective in his pay.
Fair had not been discovered when autumn came around again, making almost a year since Bayard Lorraine had wooed her in the flowery garden of Prince Gonzaga’s villa in sunny Italy. Her fate was a profound mystery.
Meanwhile the prince enjoyed himself as much as was possible under the circumstances to one of his moody, jealous temperament. He got introduced into fashionable society, and became quite a lion. Among these people, his story was not known, although it was so familiar to the working classes, and there were many fair ones who vied with each other to win his smiles. But the Fraynes came back from abroad at last, and when they found him in New York the whole story leaked out. Then the papers were filled with it, to the bitter chagrin of Bayard Lorraine, who just then came back from Europe and found himself and his sad story the theme of the newspapers and society.
His quest for Fair had failed as utterly as that of Prince Gonzaga, and now he had crossed the ocean to pursue the search. Mrs. Howard came with him. She was fast failing in health, and said sadly that she was going home to die.
It looked like it, for day by day she seemed to fade more rapidly. Bayard Lorraine came most punctually every day to see her, and one day she said to him wistfully:
“I would give much to see one of those working girls who were Fair’s companions when she was a sewing girl in New York. I should like to hear something of her history in her sorrowful girlish days.”
“I have found out where she worked. I will try to bring one of her girl friends to see you, if you wish,” he replied; and that was how it came about that Bayard Lorraine went one day to the factory and made known Mrs. Howard’s request.
Mrs. Jones, the sensible forewoman, was still there, and she told Mr. Lorraine that Fair had been more intimate with Sadie Allen than any one else. She was married now, but she could give him her address.