Cabby held out his hand, remarking grumpily:
"Five dollars, you know, is legal fare for Inauguration night."
"I'll make it ten for good luck, and you can go on a big spree to-morrow," laughed Lindsey Warwick, handing him a bill.
Cabby thanked the kind gentleman vociferously, but he did not wait till the next day, but went on his orgies at once, and wound up early next morning in the police court, where he was sent to jail for ten days in default of payment of his fine. He never saw the papers, never knew of the sensation that had followed the simple fact of his driving a young lady and gentleman home from the Inauguration Ball. He did not dream that he had been concerned in an abduction, or that Senator Winans would have made him rich for life if he had given to him the clew he possessed to his lost daughter.
Precious, the petted daughter of wealth and luxury all her life, recovered her consciousness in the smallest, shabbiest, most common-looking bedroom she had ever beheld.
A coarse woman of about fifty years was leaning over her. She looked and smelled like a laundress.
"Who are you, and where am I?" quavered Precious.
A man came forward then, and at sight of him everything came back to her memory. She lifted her head from the coarse pillow with a shriek.
"Mamma! oh, darling mamma!"
"Be quiet. Your mother is all right, my dear," said Warwick. "The story of her death was only a ruse to make you faint, so that I could get you into my power. I love you, so I brought you away to make you my prisoner until you would consent to be my bride."