“But surely the girl will be found again!” Mrs. Beresford cried, consolingly; but Alva shook her head.
“I fear not, for her disappearance was so strange. Listen, mamma: they took her to Bellevue, and she did not recover consciousness the whole way. They supposed she would certainly die of her terrible fall. When they arrived at the hospital, she was left alone on a couch in the receiving-room for a few minutes, so the attendants say, and when the physician in charge went to see about her case, the little beauty was gone—had vanished as entirely as if she had been snatched up into the sky or swallowed by the earth, and left not a trace behind.”
Mrs. Beresford smiled, and said:
“But, as we know that neither one of those things happened to her, we may hope that she is safe. My own theory is that she was unhurt by the fall, and simply fainted from the shock. When she recovered from her swoon, she doubtless became alarmed at finding herself alone in that strange place, and ran away in a fright.”
“Yes, that is what they think at the hospital; but what became of her, mamma, afterward?”
She paused a moment, then added, anxiously:
“You see, that was the day before yesterday, and she never returned to her boarding-house nor the store. So—where is she now?”
And that question, asked by Mrs. Beresford’s pale lips, became the text on which many changes were rung afterward.
A beautiful young girl had disappeared in the strangest way, and no clew to the mystery could be found.
The hospital authorities, fearing they might be accused of neglect in the matter, kept the occurrence as quiet as possible; and when some rumor of it reached the ubiquitous reporter, and he came to make inquiries, they told him the girl was all right—oh, yes, and had returned to her friends in New Jersey. She had written back to say that she had recovered from her swoon and ran away in a fright, that was all. Might he see the letter? Certainly.