“No one in this house knows. She went as she came,—a marvel and a mystery.”
“And beyond this you can give no information in regard to her?”
“None whatever.”
Mr. Dainty stood for some moments silent and perplexed. Then, with a sickening sense of disappointment, he retired, and, entering the carriage which awaited him at the door, ordered the driver to take him to his own house as rapidly as possible. He brought with him neither light nor comfort, and found none awaiting his arrival. Not a single gleam of intelligence touching the absent one had shone in upon his afflicted family.
What more could be done? The evening had waned, and it was now past the hour of nine. To abandon all search for the night seemed cruel; yet, without a single clue to unravel the mystery of the child’s absence, what step could be taken toward accomplishing her recovery? Whither were they to go in search of her?
The wretched mother, from a state of almost frantic excitement, had fallen into a condition little removed from stupor. The family physician was called in to see her, but he prescribed nothing. Her trouble was beyond the reach of any medicines he could give.
Anxious and sleepless was that night in the house of Mr. Dainty. Early in the morning the search for Madeline was renewed. Not the least active in this search was Miss Harper. With a perseverance and assiduity unknown to the sterner sex, she steadily sought to find the clue that was to unravel the mystery of Madeline’s absence. Starting where Mr. Dainty had begun, at Mrs. Brainard’s, she went from thence to the house in Fifth Street where a woman answering to the description of Mrs. Jeckyl had made a brief sojourn. Beyond this point Mr. Dainty had failed to go; but Florence was not to be thrown off so easily. Her woman’s tact and feeling all came in to quicken the interest of every member in the family, and the result was a declaration on the part of a servant, who was questioned repeatedly, that she thought she could recognise the hack-driver who took the woman, with her trunk, away.
In company with this servant, an Irish girl, Florence visited the various hack-stands in the city; but at none of them did the girl recognise any driver as the one for whom they were in search, and they were going back, the heart of Florence heavy with disappointment, when her companion exclaimed,—
“’Deed, and that’s the very mon himself, so it is!”
And she pointed to a hackman who was leisurely driving his carriage along, just in advance of them.