"Finally, I showed her Miss Lambert's photograph, which I always carry about with me. She looked at it with a slow smile, and then turning it said: 'No, this is not Mademoiselle Laroche, this is a charming young lady.' Her quiet unconsciousness of any resemblance convinced me even more than her words that she could not know Elsie."
"Indeed," added Glynn, "a quiet young ladies' boarding-school seems the very last place where one could expect to find a girl so strangely and tragically lost. Yet even now, as I recall the voice I heard the day before yesterday, I cannot believe that I was mistaken! Is it not possible that a visitor might have entered and walked round the garden with the other two? unknown to the head governess."
"Of course it is possible, but very improbable. If Miss Lambert was carried away against her own will (which I do not believe), her captors would not let her go visiting; and if she aided in concealing herself, why, she would not seek acquaintances."
"True, and unanswerable. Still, when I think of the voice I heard little more than forty-eight hours ago, I cannot resist the conviction that if I could have burst through that accursed hedge I should have clasped Elsie—the real Elsie—in my arms."
"Good heavens, Hugh! would you have clasped her in your arms?"
"I would! if she had not repelled me! I tell you I would give life itself,—to find—the Elsie Lambert I believed in."
"Yes, but can you hope to do so? Must you not admit that the balance of evidence is against such a find?" cried Lady Gethin, distressed, yet deeply interested.
"There are beliefs and instincts," returned Glynn, "the deepest—the strangest, respecting which one cannot reason! Shall we ever understand the 'wherefore' that is beyond and above our material sense?"
"Never," said Lady Gethin, sharply. "There is a something we cannot define or fathom that stirs us as though a second self was being evolved from the coarser everyday serviceable ego; but it will always escape our ken! Nor will it do to trust these bewildering, shadowy promptings; we must act in the living present by the light of that most uncommon faculty, common sense. These dreamy tendencies are not like you! This unlucky business has upset your mental balance, Hugh. You have done your best to find this poor girl; she has no claim whatever upon you. You must try to put her out of your head, and take up your life again."
"I suppose I must," he returned thoughtfully; "but it will be hard. Curiously enough I found a letter awaiting me when I returned, from Lambert, dated Liverpool, informing me he was to sail next day for New York, where he had some faint hope of finding a clue to his daughter. He must have passed through London. I am surprised he did not call on me. I did not think he would have avoided me."