"No tidings of him yet," he said, "and Winans is anxious you should go to her at once and break it with all possible tenderness, with the assurance that he expects at any hour to find the baby and bring it to her. Norah will come back after it is told. Poor lady! fate has done its worst for her."
At the door of Grace's room let us pause, dear reader. We have heard the moan of that aching, tortured heart so often, as she quailed before the shafts of fate, that we dare not look on the agony whose remembrance will haunt even the callous heart of the fashionable and world-worn Mrs. Conway through all her future years. It was the agony of Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
ON THE OCEAN.
"Wan was her cheek
With hollow watch, her mantle torn,
Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye."
—Tennyson's "Princess."
"There is none
In all this cold and hollow world, no fount
Of deep, strong, deathless love, save that within
A mother's heart."
—Hemans.
At dusk of the next day Paul Winans walked impatiently up and down the floor of his room at the Arlington House. He was waiting for the appearance of Keene, the best detective in the District, who had promised to meet him at six o'clock that evening, to report progress.