forget."

Basil Hurlhurst was not a superstitious man, yet he felt a strange,
unaccountable dread stealing over him at the bare mention of such a
thing. It was more than he could endure to hear the name of the wife
he had loved, and the wife who slept beneath the wild sea-waves,
coupled in one breath--the fair young wife he had idolized, and the
dark, sparkling face of the wife who had brought upon him such
wretched folly in his youth!

"Have you not some clew to give me?" he cried out in agony--"some way
by which I can trace her and learn her fate?"

She shook her head.

"This is unbearable!" he cried, pacing up and down the room like one
who had received an unexpected death-blow. "I am bewildered! Merciful
Heaven! which way shall I turn? This accounts for my restlessness all
these years, when I thought of my child--my restless longing and
fanciful dreams! I thought her quietly sleeping on Evalia's breast.
God only knows what my tender little darling has suffered, or in what
part of the world she lives, or if she lives at all!"

It had been just one hour since Basil Hurlhurst had entered that room,
a placid-faced, gray-haired man. When he left it his hair was white as
snow from the terrible ordeal through which he had just passed.

He scarcely dared hope that he should yet find her--where or how he
should find her, if ever.

In the corridor he passed groups of maidens, but he neither saw nor
heard them. He was thinking of the child that had been stolen from him
in her infancy--the sweet little babe with the large blue eyes and
shining rings of golden hair.

He saw Pluma and Rex greeting some new arrivals out on the flower-bordered
terrace, but he did not stop until he had reached his own apartments.

He did not send for Pluma, to divulge the wonderful discovery he had
made. There was little sympathy or confidence between the father and
daughter.

"I can never sleep again until I have some clew to my child!" he
cried, frantically wringing his hands.

Hastily he touched the bell-rope.

"Mason," he said to the servant who answered the summons, "pack my
valise at once. I am going to take the first train to Baltimore. You
have no time to lose."

He did not hear the man's ejaculation of surprise as his eyes fell on
the face of the master who stood before him with hair white as
snow--so utterly changed in one short hour.

"You couldn't possibly make the next train, sir; it leaves in a few
moments."

"I te