"My God!" cried Basil Hurlhurst, starting to his feet, pale as death,
his eyes fairly burning, and the veins standing out on his forehead
like cords, "you do not know what you say, woman! My little
child--Evalia's child and mine--not dead, but stolen on the night its
mother died! My God! it can not be; surely you are mad!" he shrieked.
"It is true, master," she moaned, "true as Heaven."
"You knew my child, for whom I grieved for seventeen long years, was
stolen--not dead--and dared to keep the knowledge from me?" he cried,
passionately, beside himself with rage, agony and fear. "Tell me
quickly, then, where I shall find my child!" he cried, breathlessly.
"I do not know, master," she moaned.
For a few moments Basil Hurlhurst strode up and down the room like a
man bereft of reason.
"You will not curse me," wailed the tremulous voice from the bed; "I
have your promise."
"I can not understand how Heaven could let your lips remain silenced
all these long, agonizing years, if your story be true. Why, yourself
told me my wife and child had both died on that never-to-be-forgotten
night, and were buried in one grave. How could you dare steep your
lips with a lie so foul and black? Heaven could have struck you dead
while the false words were yet warm on your lips!"
"I dared not tell you, master," moaned the feeble voice, "lest the
shock would kill you; then, after you recovered, I grew afraid of the
secret I had dared to keep, and dared not tell you."
"And yet you knew that somewhere in this cruel world my little child
was living--my tender, little fair-haired child--while I, her father,
was wearing my life out with the grief of that terrible double loss.
Oh, woman, woman, may God forgive you, for I never can, if your words
be true."
"I feared such anger as this; that is why I dared not tell you," she
whispered, faintly. "I appeal to your respect for me in the past to
hear me, to your promise of forgiveness to shield me, to your love for
the little child to listen calmly while I have strength to speak."
He saw she was right. His head seemed on fire, and his heart seemed
bursting with the acute intensity of his great excitement.
He must listen while she had strength to tell him of his child.
"Go on--go on!" he cried, hoarsely, burying his face in the
bed-clothes; "tell me of my child!"
"You remember the terrible storm, master, how the tree moaned, and
without against the western wing--where your beautiful young wife lay
dead, with the pretty, smiling, blue-eyed babe upon her breast?"
"Yes, yes--go on--you are driving me mad!" he groaned.
"You remember how you fell down senseless by her bedside when we told
you the terrible news--the young child-bride was dead?"
She knew, by the quivering of his form, he heard her.
"As they carried you from the room, master, I thought I saw a woman's
form gliding stealthily on before, through the dark corridors. A blaze
of lightning illumined the hall for one brief instant, and I can swear
I saw a woman's face--a white, mocking, gloriously beautiful
face--strangely like the face of your first wife, master, Pluma's
mother. I knew it could not be her, for she was lying beneath the
sea-waves. It was not a good omen, and I felt sorely afraid and
greatly troubled. When I returned to the room from which they had
carried you--there lay your fair young wife with a smile on her
lips--but the tiny babe that had slumbered on her breast was gone."
"Oh, God! if you had only told me this years ago," cried the unhappy
father. "Have you any idea who could have taken the child? It could
not have been for gain, or I should have heard of it long ago. I did
not know I had an enemy in the wide world. You say you saw a woman's
face?" he asked, thoughtfully.
"It was the ghost of your first wife," asserted the old housekeeper,
astutely. "I never saw her face but once; but there was something
about it one could not easily 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 tell you you _must_ make it!" cried Basil Hurlhurst. "Go and do as
I bid you at once! Don't stand there staring at me; you are losing
golden moments. Fly at once, I tell you!"
Poor old Mason was literally astounded. What had come over his kind,
courteous master?
"I have nothing that could aid them in the search," he said to
himself, pacing restlessly up and down the room. "Ah! stay!--there is
Evalia's portrait! The little one must look like her mother if she is
living yet!"
He went to his writing-desk and drew from a private drawer a little
package tied with a faded ribbon, which he carefully untied with
trembling fingers.
It was a portrait on ivory of a beautiful, girlish, dimpled face, with
shy, upraised blue eyes, a smiling rosebud mouth, soft pink cheeks,
and a wealth of rippling, sunny-golden hair.
"She must look like this," he whispered. "God grant that I may find
her!"
"Mr. Rex Lyon says, please may he see you a few moments, sir," said
Mason, popping his black head in at the door.
"No; I do not wish to see any one, and I will not see any one. Have
you that satchel packed, I say?"
"Yes, sir; it will be ready directly, sir," said the man, obediently.
"Don't come to me with any more messages--lock everybody out. Do you
hear me, Mason? I _will_ be obeyed!"
"Yes, sir, I hear. No one shall disturb you."
Again Basil Hurlhurst turned to the portrait, paying little attention
to what was transpiring around him. "I shall put it at once in the
hands of the cleverest detectives," he mused; "surely they will be
able to find some trace of my lost darling."
Seventeen years! Ah, what might have happened her in that time? The
master of Whitestone Hall always kept a file of the Baltimore papers;
he rapidly ran his eye down the different columns.
"Ah, here is what I want," he exclaimed, stopping short. "Messrs.
Tudor, Peck & Co., Experienced Detectives, ---- Street, Baltimore.
They are noted for their skill. I will give the case into their hands.
If they restore my darling child alive and well into my hands I will
make them wealthy men--if she is dead, the blow will surely kill me."
He heard voices debating in the corridor without.
"Did you tell him I wished particularly to see him?" asked Rex, rather
discomfited at the refusal.
"Yes, sir," said Mason, dubiously.
"Miss Pluma, his daughter, wishes me to speak with him on a very
important matter. I am surprised that he so persistently refuses to
see me," said Rex, proudly, wondering if Pluma's father had heard that
gossip--among the guests--that he did not love his daughter. "I do not
know that I have offended the old gentleman in any way," he told
himself. "If it comes to that," he thought, "I can do no more than
confess the truth to him--the whole truth about poor little Daisy--no
matter what the consequences may be."
Fate was playing at cross-purposes with handsome Rex, but no subtle
warning came to him.