even little Ann quite failed to comfort her. She did not complain, but
she went about with a drooping look, somewhat like a little flower
which wants water.

"Iris is not well," Miss Ramsay said one morning to Mrs. Dolman. "She
does not eat her food, and when I went into her bedroom last night I
found that she was wide awake, and had evidently been silently crying.
I think she ought to see a doctor!"

"Dear, dear!" replied Mrs. Dolman. "Do you know, Miss Ramsay, I am
almost sorry I undertook the charge of the little Delaneys. They
certainly have turned out, as their poor father expressed it, a
handful. If Iris is really ill, I had better see her. Send her to me.
You don't suppose she is--fretting?"

"Yes; of course she is fretting dreadfully," replied Miss Ramsay. "And
no wonder, poor little girl! For my part, I consider it perfectly
awful to contemplate the fate of those poor lost children."

"Oh, they will be found--they are likely to return here any day,"
replied Mrs. Dolman. "It is just like you, Miss Ramsay, to go to the
fair with things, and to imagine the very worst. Why, for instance,
should not some very kind people have found the children? Why must
they, as a matter of course, have fallen into the hands of cruel and
unprincipled folk? Some of the very sharpest detectives in Scotland
Yard are on their track. For my part, I have not the slightest doubt
that they will soon be brought back."

Miss Ramsay uttered a sigh.

"I will send Iris down to speak to you," she said.

This conversation occurred between three and four weeks after little
Orion and Diana had disappeared. Mrs. Dolman was in her study. It was
a very ugly room, sparsely furnished. There was a large, old-fashioned
desk in the center of the room, and she was seated in an armchair in
front of it, busily engaged making up her different tradesmen's books,
when the door was softly opened and Iris came in.

Mrs. Dolman had not had any special conversation with Iris since the
mysterious disappearance of the two younger children, and now, as she
raised her eyes and looked at her attentively, she was startled at
the great change in her appearance. The child was reduced almost to a
shadow. She was dressed in her heavy black, without a touch of
relieving white. Her lovely hair hung over her shoulders, and was
pushed back from her low brow, bringing into greater contrast the
small, pinched, white face, and the great brown eyes, which looked now
too bi