"Pardon my inquisitiveness, madam, but I am in search of a friend, who, I was told, was sent here nearly three years ago, being at that time the unfortunate victim of a love episode."
Guy fancied the reserved matron was casting covert glances at himself, and he fairly staggered as she said in a long breath—
"The pity is, you young gentleman don't repent in time. Where's the use o' looking for the girl, now, she's mad; why didn't ye leave her her senses when she had 'em?"
"My dear woman," Guy gasped, with dilated eyes, "I am not the party to blame, I am only a friend of the young lady's, I am sorry you should consider me guilty of such a serious crime!"
"Oh, beg your pardon, sir," the woman interrupted coolly, "but its not such a great mistake of mine, I'll be bound the young gentleman as has had his finger in the pie, is just as sleek and fine to look at outside as yourself," then meditatively "there's no trusting young men by their looks now-a-days."
Guy could not shirk the truth of this, for Vivian Standish's "outside" was far more polished than his own, and he therefore accepted the woman's tame apology and calmed down.
"I would give anything I own, that would assist me in recovering her," he said, so earnestly, that his matter-of-fact guide rested her lean chin in her hollow palm, and agreed to "think" for his benefit.
After a second or two fraught with extreme anxiety for Guy, the woman asked:
"Do you know of anything particular to trace her by?"
Guy recalled the village doctor's account and quickly told her, that, the circumstances connected with her mania had so impressed her, that she continually talked of revenge, frequently using the name "Bijou," "she had also," he continued, a little less hopefully, and more reluctantly, "a large Newfoundland dog with her, when she left the doctor's house on the 'Lower Farms'"