may be in trouble, perhaps in pain; and her gentle spirit in some ecstacy of longing has for a term escaped its material bondage, to hover near the spot it has most loved of all the earth. It was Margaret as she must be now—pale, calm, and beautiful—come to me in spirit, to warn—to bid adieu, perhaps: I cannot know. She may be dying, but she is not dead. I cannot reason upon this. I can give you no such explanation as would satisfy modern science; but I can, and I do, believe!”
“And your next step?”
“Continued search. The same post brought me these three letters.”
He took from his pocket a packet of papers, among which were the letters he referred to. Two of them were written on thin paper, and bore foreign post-marks. The third was a London letter posted apparently in an adjoining neighbourhood.
“This tells me,” he said, opening the last, “that there is some one residing in a street in Camden Town, answering the description of her whom I seek. It is a mistake. I have made inquiries. This is from Paris. My correspondent informs me, that on the fourth floor, No. 117, Rue des Martyrs, resides Madame Winter, stated to be German, but believed to be English—age about thirty-three—lives very retired. This is from Vienna. It gives particulars concerning a Madame d’Audry, residing in a secluded street, in the outskirts of the city. One of my correspondents must be in error. It is likely enough that they both are. It will not be the first time by many that they have been so. But I start to-morrow on this new trace. To Paris first, and then on.
“And now it is growing late, and I have detained you long. Thank you for your kind interest and attention, and good night. I will write to you from the continent. I will see you on my return. Think over my strange story—believe it—if you can—for it is true. I am no madman, tell those who think me so—and my strange doings have had an object. Good night!”
I assured him of my deep symathy, and much moved by what I had heard, I left him.
CHAPTER III.
A year and some five months intervened between my parting with Daly and our next meeting.
Circumstances had changed with me. My habits were now more those of ordinary people. I no longer rose at abnormal hours. I breakfasted in my own apartments. The early coffee-house was to me as a thing of the past.
I had often pondered over Daly’s strange narrative. I had never received the promised communication from abroad, and I began to think that I had lighted upon a thread of mystery which no effort of mine could ever ravel out completely—that I had met with the first chapters of a romance of which the last part was to be for ever withheld.
He had not been to the coffee-room since my first conversation with him there. He had not been heard of at his lodgings for many months.
I was strolling in St. James’s Park on a lovely evening in August. The weather was very sultry, and the sinking sun was still darting out hot rays between the branches of the trees, like a fire from behind the bars of a grate. The park was full of visitors, moving slowly about in an oppressed manner, hovering on the edge of the ornamental water, or reclining on the parched turf, trying to fancy some slight element of freshness was springing out of the lazy breathing of the evening air. I was idling amid the idle, thankful to be out of the hot streets, or the hot rooms of a London house, and reckless as to the near approach of the hour for closing the park gates. Suddenly I saw before me a form I could hardly fail to recognise.
On one of the park seats encircling a tree, among a crowd of other loungers, but completely isolated in mind from his neighbours, Daly was sitting, resting his hand upon his stick, and gazing abstractedly upon the scene before him. I was struck with the change in him. Ill as he had been at the time of my parting with him, he now appeared to be infinitely worse. His face had paled fearfully, as though sorrow were turning it to stone. Many, too, were the lines of suffering upon it. His hair had turned quite white—his whole frame was emaciated and bent. I have never seen any man assume in so short a time the aspect of extreme old age. He appeared to be lost in contemplation, and I felt for some minutes unwilling to disturb him, but as at length it became evident that I should not receive recognition unless I did so, I went to him and touched him gently on the shoulder. He started up instantly, much agitated, but gradually recovering himself, he greeted me cordially, and rose to walk with me.
“I have often wished to see you,” he said, “and I ought to have written to you. I promised to do so, I know. But my acquaintance with you was after all so slight. I had so poor a claim upon your sympathy, that much as I desired to do so, I could not bring myself to write to you from abroad, or to seek you out on my return to England a few weeks since. Pray pardon me. Your kind welcome assures me that I have done wrong in doubting for one moment your kind interest in me and my misfortunes.”
His voice had lost its firmness. He spoke in a low and broken tone, and as though he breathed with difficulty. He leant upon my arm as we walked slowly away from the other saunterers, now turning their steps towards the park gates. He bore so much the mark of suffering, so fixed an air of disappointment if not despair was in his face, that I for some time forbore to inquire as to the object which had drawn him from England. At length I questioned him upon the subject.
“All has failed,” he said, in a tone of anguish. “The information I had received was founded upon error. I have had a long, long journey, and a fatiguing search since we parted—but all has been in vain. I have failed to find her, and have returned.”
“You have resigned the task?”
“I am dying,” he answered, solemnly.
I recollected his old declaration that he would give up his quest but with his life.
“I have enough medical learning to know that