“Alva!” cried Mrs. Beresford, gazing at her daughter in consternation.
She grew pale and shuddered as she spoke, for the thought of the lovely
girl’s terrible accident touched her deeply.
“Is it not a terrible disappointment?” cried Alva. “Perhaps I shall
never find her now, and my ‘Cupid’ will never be finished.”
“But surely the girl will be found again!” Mrs. Beresford cried,
consolingly; but Alva shook her head.
“I fear not, for her disappearance was so strange. Listen, mamma: they
took her to Bellevue, and she did not recover consciousness the whole
way. They supposed she would certainly die of her terrible fall. When
they arrived at the hospital, she was left alone on a couch in the
receiving-room for a few minutes, so the attendants say, and when the
physician in charge went to see about her case, the little beauty was
gone--had vanished as entirely as if she had been snatched up into the
sky or swallowed by the earth, and left not a trace behind.”
Mrs. Beresford smiled, and said:
“But, as we know that neither one of those things happened to her, we
may hope that she is safe. My own theory is that she was unhurt by the
fall, and simply fainted from the shock. When she recovered from her
swoon, she doubtless became alarmed at finding herself alone in that
strange place, and ran away in a fright.”
“Yes, that is what they think at the hospital; but what became of her,
mamma, _afterward_?”
She paused a moment, then added, anxiously:
“You see, that was the day before yesterday, and she never returned to
her boarding-house nor the store. So--_where is she now?_”
And that question, asked by Mrs. Beresford’s pale lips, became the text
on which many changes were rung afterward.
A beautiful young girl had disappeared in the strangest way, and no
clew to the mystery could be found.
The hospital authorities, fearing they might be accused of neglect
in the matter, kept the occurrence as quiet as possible; and when
some rumor of it reached the ubiquitous reporter, and he came to make
inquiries, they told him the girl was all right--oh, yes, and had
returned to her friends in New Jersey. She had written back to say that
she had recovered from her swoon and ran away in a fright, that was
all. Might he see the letter? Certainly.
But a hasty search proved unavailing. They were sorry, very sorry, but
it must have gone into the waste-basket.
So the reporter, satisfied that there was no sensation in the case,
withdrew, and sought a spicy paragraph for his paper elsewhere. But,
all the same, he had been cleverly gulled and cheated out of an
interesting item.
For the mystery of Florence Fane’s disappearance became one of the most
unfathomable on record.
The fair young girl returned neither to her New York boarding-house,
nor to the store where she was employed, nor to her Mount Vernon home.
It was not until a week had passed, and poor Mrs. Banks was beginning
to fret over the non-reception of letters from Floy, that she was told
the terrible truth of the girl’s disappearance.
But, prompted by Otho, they made light of the matter, declaring that
the giddy young girl would turn up when least expected. No doubt she
had gone to stay with some new friends she had made in New York.
Poor Mrs. Banks was heart-broken, but she could do nothing. Poverty
tied her hands from making any search for her darling. She could only
pine and endure in silence.
The Maurys did not see that there was anything to do but wait for
developments.
In all the world there seemed to be no friend to seek for the missing
girl.
And yet, undreamed of by the Maurys, there was a search going on for
Floy.
It seemed like a grim mocking of fate that the Beresfords, who would
have rejoiced to hear of the death of St. George’s sweetheart, should
have put themselves to great expense to trace Florence Fane in her
mysterious disappearance. Yet they had done so.
Mrs. Beresford was at heart a noble lady, and, where personal pride did
not goad her to extremes, a firm friend.
She had taken a strong, admiring interest in the pretty young salesgirl
whose beauty had charmed her, and whose pride had amused her while it
also inspired respect.
She would not have owned it to herself, but Floy’s blue eyes had looked
straight into her heart and won herself a place there.
She had conceived the idea of employing the young girl to act as a
model for Alva, and her disappointment was almost as keen as Alva’s
when she learned the truth.
Each day they both felt the disappointment more keenly, until from the
mother came the startling suggestion:
“Why not put a private detective on her track?”
“Mamma, you seem to feel sure that the girl is alive, while on my side
I think that her brain was injured by her terrible fall, and that she
left the hospital in a dazed condition and met death in her wanderings.”
“I have a strange feeling that the girl is alive and will be found
again, dear, so I shall put a detective on the case at once,” returned
Mrs. Beresford; and she sent for one in whom she knew she could place
confidence, and sent him on the quest.