“Certainly, sir. I expect you have more right to it than I have, for it all seems to be about you,” she answered.
“And you will come with me to see Mrs. Howard?”
She hesitated a moment, then said that she would leave little Charley with a neighbor and get ready to go at once.
It seemed strange to our simple Sadie to be riding in a motor car by the side of Bayard Lorraine, and it seemed stranger yet to be going into that grand Fifth Avenue mansion; but Mrs. Howard speedily made her feel at home, for, grasping her hand warmly, she exclaimed at once:
“You were my poor girl’s friend, and I bid you welcome with all my heart.”
Then Sadie had to go over the whole story again.
“Although her journal, which I gave to Mr. Lorraine, will tell you more than I can,” she said.
Mrs. Howard wept when she heard the story of Fair’s injudicious training by her weak-minded, ambitious mother.
“Poor little one, poor little one! She never said one word. She was most loyal to her mother, and took all the blame herself, while I was so hard upon her and believed her utterly base!” she exclaimed, with poignant remorse, and she felt that she would have given the whole world, had it been hers, to find the missing girl.
Fair was thoroughly vindicated, her trials and temptations all understood, and she herself loved more than ever. But where was she?