She waited till Walter went out; then she wrote a brief note and placed it on the library-table at his favorite corner, and, after bidding Mrs. Monroe good morning, went out as though for a walk. Frequently she looked back with tearful eyes at the home she felt constrained to leave; but gathering her strength, she turned away and plunged into the current that set down Washington Street.
Brave Heart! alone in a great city, whose people were too much engrossed with their own distresses and apprehensions to give heed to the sufferings of others! Alone among strangers, she must seek a home and the means of support. Who would receive an unknown, friendless girl? Who, in the terrible palsy of trade, would furnish her employment?
CHAPTER XXIII.
There was naturally great surprise when Walter Monroe returned home to dinner and Alice was found to be missing. It was evident that it was not an accidental detention, for her trunk had been sent for an hour previous, and the messenger either could not or would not give any information as to her whereabouts. Mrs. Monroe was excessively agitated,—her faculties lost in a maze, like one beholding an accident without power of thought or motion. To Walter it was a heavy blow; he feared that his own advances had been the occasion of her leaving the house, and he reproached himself bitterly for his headlong folly. Their dinner was a sad and cheerless meal; the mother feeling all a woman's solicitude for a friendless girl; the son filled with a tumult of sorrow, remorse, love, and pity.
"Poor Alice!" said Mrs. Monroe; "perhaps she has found no home."
"Don't, mother! The thought of her in the streets, or among suspicious strangers, or vulgar people, is dreadful. We must leave no means untried to find her. Did she leave no word, no note?"
"No,—none that I know of."
"Have you looked?"
She shook her head. Walter left his untasted food, and hastily looked in the hall, then in the parlor, and at last in the library. There was the note in her own delicate hand.