“I steadily refused, and I remained his prisoner almost fifteen years, while he gave it out to the world that I had wearied of my American wife and gone to travel in far countries.
“Is it not a wonder that my heart did not break in those cruel years? At last Heaven took pity on my tears and prayers, and stretched my inhuman parent on a bed of death. Then he had me brought to his bedside, and implored my pardon for what he had done, after confessing that my poor wife, believing his diabolical tale that I had deserted her, had eked out a toilsome existence for herself and babe in London for a few years, then returned to her native land, and he knew not what had been her fate thereafter.
“How could I forgive him his cruel work? I fell in a swoon by his bedside, and before I revived he died, and went to meet the judgment of the wicked. Then I set about finding my darlings. I wrote to her old home in Mount Vernon, New York, and received no reply. I searched London over for months, and with no success, so I determined to come to America. I went to my wife’s ancestral home, Nellest Farm, and found it was deserted. I made inquiries, and learned that my wife, Mrs. Fane, as she called herself, had died the terrible death of the suicide ten years before—that my daughter Florence was taken care of by some kindly neighbor who only lately met death by a terrible accident!”
“No—no; I am your daughter Florence, dearest father!” cried Floy, in joyous excitement.
CHAPTER XLIX.
“SOMETHING TERRIBLE!”
Leaving Floy to explain matters to her new-found father, we must return to Mount Vernon and follow our hero in his search for his missing love.
At his hotel, which was located within a square of the Maury mansion, he found that the all-absorbing subject of conversation was of the disasters that had befallen the Maury family within the last twenty-four hours.
The great importing house of Maury & Co. had failed yesterday, and the head of the house had fallen dead of a stroke of apoplexy.
And following on this calamity to the devoted wife and family was the mysterious disappearance of Otho and Maybelle.