But Glynn could not tear himself from Paris. How often he recalled the circumstances under which he had uttered these words to Elsie; they were almost the last he had spoken to her. He could almost hear the soft, tremulous tones in which she promised to listen to his reasons for not being able to tear himself away. No, it was impossible that she could have had the smallest anticipation of the dreadful catastrophe which awaited her. Yet her very last words—her last look haunted him. The questioning, wondering glance, the half-whisper—"you puzzle me!"
Twice during this miserable period of indecision Glynn encountered Vincent,—once on the stair leading to Lambert's abode, and once in the Boulevards.
In the first instance he greeted Glynn with the frankest expression of sorrow and sympathy for the great misfortune which had befallen Lambert, mentioning his own deep grief, and his compassionate forgiveness of Lambert's injurious accusations against himself.
Glynn found Lambert in a state of furious excitement after this visit, and uttering violent half-unintelligible threats against Vincent.
On their second meeting Glynn tried to pass him, but in vain, and was obliged to listen to a string of suggestions and conjectures respecting the supposed fugitive which nearly drove him to throttle his interlocutor and fling him into the street under the hoofs of the passing horses, especially as he felt that Vincent's small, penetrating, watchful eyes were intently, searchingly fixed on his face while he spoke.
At length letters from his partners obliged him to quit the scene of so much suffering and disaster.
It was with the deepest reluctance that Glynn bid Lambert good-bye. The unhappy father still wore the same aspect of helplessness, of sullen submission to the irresistible. He scarcely heeded Glynn's announcement of his immediate departure, and merely answered his ardent request for the earliest information respecting any crumbs of intelligence in the affirmative. He put Glynn's card in his pocket-book mechanically. Yet he wrung his hand hard at parting, and bid God bless him, brokenly—yet heartily.
Glynn, not satisfied with Lambert's promise, obtained an interview with M. Claude, who was even more curt and immovable than ever. He, however, condescended to promise that he would not fail to let him know should any traces of the missing girl be found.
Glynn was not perhaps fully aware of the withering change which the torture of the last three weeks had wrought in him until he attempted to resume the routine of his former life. The color and flavor seemed to have been extracted from existence, nothing was left worth hoping for, working for, living for, and the heads of his firm exclaimed at his haggard, worn aspect.
The second day after he had resumed his attendance at the office he found himself too faint and dizzy to continue the writing on which he was engaged. His head ached intensely, his pulses throbbed. He rang, and began to explain to the clerk who answered his summons that he felt so ill he must return home; but before he could finish his sentence he fell heavily at the feet of his startled hearer. He was conveyed carefully to his own residence, which he did not leave for many weeks,—not till he had been brought to the verge of the grave by a fierce brain-fever.