In the gray dawn of the wild March morning Senator Winans came home alone, looking ten years older, the stamp of despair on his dark, handsome face.
He went at once to his wife, and found her lying awake in a fever of suspense and anxiety.
When she saw him enter alone she started up with a cry of keen despair:
"Precious! Oh, where is Precious?"
Her husband knelt by her side, clasped the feverish little hands, and kissed the woeful white face, all wet with tears, like a rain-drenched lily.
"Be brave, be patient, my dearest, for you must bear this cruel suspense yet a little longer," he sighed.
"Oh, Paul, you have not found her yet? Then she must be dead, our little darling!"
He had decided to tell her the truth. It would be better than the anguish of wretched uncertainty, so he broke it to her gently, the story of the golden-haired girl who had been carried out of the ballroom unconscious.
"It must have been our golden-haired darling. I believe she has been kidnaped for the sake of a ransom; so cheer up, my darling, for the wretches will not harm our pet; they will keep her safe and well to earn the reward they will expect to be offered in the morning papers. And I have attended to that already, Grace, for my advisers think it will be best to give great publicity to the affair, as in that case it may come to the knowledge of some persons who may be able to give us an unexpected clew. Oh, my wife; do not sob so bitterly. Our darling shall soon be found, I swear it," and for the sake of the anguish she saw in his eyes the poor mother fought with her sorrow, and tried to find a glimmer of light in the Cimmerian darkness.
But it was cruel, cruel, for the horror of the present was only augmented by the memory of the past. Her eldest born, her precious boy, had been stolen in his babyhood, and four years elapsed before he was recovered. It had taken all the strength of youth and hope to endure that cross. Now she was older, frailer, and she knew she could not bear another such agony and live.