had in
some way fallen overboard.

"I was distracted with grief, and nearly lost my reason, and when we
reached the other side I passed into a long illness. It was many weeks
before I returned to consciousness of my affairs, and the terrible
realization that my baby was gone forever. I felt as though I could not
face the future without her. I had scarcely recovered from the first
shock attending my great loss, when my husband contracted typhoid fever
and died after an illness of five weeks.

"We were in Florence, Italy, at the time and I prayed that I might die,
too. It was during those dark hours that Mrs. Gibson proved her
friendship for me. She sailed for Italy the instant she received the
cablegram announcing my husband's death, and brought me back to America
with her. I spent a year with her in her New York home, before returning
to Denver. Since then I have never been east until this summer.

"Four months ago I received a letter from the nurse who had charge of
Mabel on the day of her disappearance. It was a great surprise to me, as
she had left us directly after we landed with the intention of returning
to France. But the news the letter contained was a far greater surprise,
for she stated that Mabel had never gone aboard the vessel.

"The nurse had had some personal business to attend to before going
aboard, and in order to save time had taken Mabel with her. In some
inexplicable manner Mabel had strayed from her side. She had made
frantic search for the child and finally, not daring to go to us with
the truth, had conceived the idea of making us believe that she had
taken Mabel aboard the ship. She had bribed the purser, a Frenchman whom
she knew, to corroborate her story, and had succeeded in her treacherous
design.

"She wrote that she had longed over and over again to confess the truth,
but had not dared to do so. She had heart trouble, she said, and her
days were numbered. Therefore she felt that she must confess the truth
before it became too late.

"You can imagine," said Mrs. Allison, "the effect this letter had upon
me. For fourteen years I had mourned my child as dead. It seemed
infinitely worse to hear that she had not died then, but was perhaps
alive, and in what circumstances?

"The day I received the letter I took the train for the east, wiring the
Gibsons to meet me, and aided by them engaged the best detective service
upon the case. There was little or nothing to furnish us with a clue,