A Strange Disappearance

  CHAPTER XIV. MRS. DANIELS

  She still wore her bonnet and shawl and her face was like marble.

  "You want me?" said she with a hurried look towards Mr. Blake that hadas much fear as surprise in it.

  "Yes," murmured that gentleman moving towards her with an effort wecould very well appreciate. "Mrs. Daniels, who was the girl you harboredin that room above us for so long? Speak; what was her name and wheredid she come from?"

  The housekeeper trembling in every limb, cast us one hurried appeal.

  "Speak!" reechoed Mr. Gryce; "the time for secrecy has passed."

  "O," cried she, sinking into a chair from sheer inability to stand, "itwas your wife, Mr. Blake, the young creature you--"

  "Ah!"

  All the agony, the hopelessness, the love, the passion of those last fewmonths flashed up in that word. She stopped as if she had been shot, butseeing the hand which he had hurriedly raised, fall slowly before him,went on with a burst,

  "O sir, she made me swear on my knees I would never betray her, nomatter what happened. When not two weeks after your father died she cameto the house and asking for me, told me all her story and all her love;how she could not reconcile it with her idea of a wife's duty to liveunder any other roof than that of her husband, and lifting off the blackwig which she wore, showed me how altered she had made herself by thatsimple change--in her case more marked by the fact that her eyes werein keeping with black hair, while with her own bright locks they alwaysgave you a shock as of something strange and haunting--I gave up my willas if forced by a magnetic power, and not only opened the house to herbut my heart as well; swearing to all she demanded and keeping my oathtoo, as I would preserve my soul from sin and my life from the knife ofthe destroyer."

  "But, when she went," broke from the pallid lips of the man before her,"when she was taken away from the house, what then?"

  "Ah," returned the agitated woman, "what then! Do you not think Isuffered? To be held by my oath, an oath I was satisfied she would wishkept even at this crisis, yet knowing all the while she was driftingaway into some evil that you, if you knew who she was, would give yourlife to avert from your honor if not from her innocent head! To see youcold, indifferent, absorbed in other things, while she, who would haveperished any day for your happiness, was losing her life perhaps in theclutches of those horrible villains! Do not ask me to tell you what Ihave suffered since she went; I can never tell you,--innocent, tender,noble-hearted creature that she was."

  "Was?" His hand clutched his heart as if it had been seized by a deathlyspasm. "Why do you say was?"

  "Because I have just come from the Morgue where she lies dead."

  "No, no," came in a low shriek from his lips, "that is not she; that isanother woman, like her perhaps, but not she."

  "Would to God you were right; but the long golden braids! Such hair ashers I never saw on anyone before."

  "Mr. Blake is right," I broke in, for I could not endure this scene anylonger. "The woman taken out of the East river to-day has been both seenand spoken to by him and that not long since. He should know if it ishis wife."

  "And isn't it?"

  "No, a thousand times no; the girl was a perfect stranger."

  The assurance seemed to lift a leaden weight from her heart. "O thankGod," she murmured dropping with an irresistible impulse on her knees.Then with a sudden return of her old tremble, "But I was only to revealher secret in case of her death! What have I done, O what have I done!Her only hope lay in my faithfulness."

  Mr. Blake leaning heavily on the table before him, looked in her face.

  "Mrs. Daniels," said he, "I love my wife; her hope now lies in me."

  She leaped to her feet with a joyous bound. "You love her? O thank God!"she again reiterated but this time in a low murmur to her self. "ThankGod!" and weeping with unrestrained joy, she drew back into a corner.

  Of course after that, all that remained for us to do was to lay ourheads together and consult as to the best method of renewing our searchafter the unhappy girl, now rendered of double interest to us by thefacts with which we had just been made acquainted. That she had beenforced away from the roof that sheltered her by the power of her fatherand brother was of course no longer open to doubt. To discover them,therefore, meant to recover her. Do you wonder, then, that from themoment we left Mr. Blake's house, the capture of that brace of thievesbecame the leading purpose of our two lives?