finding you. My
aunt thinks she saw you in the street the other day; but I did not need
that to tell me you were here. I have guessed it for a long time. I
have almost felt you knew how I suffer. I am asking an impossible
service. Captain Morton is abroad, and he refuses to come home. I am
dying, and he will not believe it. I have written him and cabled him;
but I have said I was dying for the last three years. Now it is true.
Will you go over there and see him? _Make him believe it._ Make him
come to me. I do not know how--but make him. His bankers are Baring
Bros. Perhaps they can tell you where he is.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

Dear lady,--I start to-night. It was generous of you to ask me. He
shall come.

* * * * *

But Captain Morton was not to be found, either in England or on the
Continent; and so there was much delay which must have tried the soul
of the messenger beyond endurance. Through one of the foolish ironies
of life, the captain ("rather fat," six years before!) had decided, in
a futile blindness to his own limitations, to join an exploring party
to the interior of Abyssinia. He had always a childish vanity; perhaps
that led him to ignore all the habits of his luxurious past and seek
healthier living through the means he had despised. Thus to nourish
himself for more vices! So does the _bon vivant_ recuperate at Spas.

Thither, as soon as Francis Hume could get upon his track, he followed
him, through danger and delay, through wilderness and night. The
difficulties of the journey were a thousandfold enhanced by his
ignorance of any definite route; and he made many a maddening detour
and experienced tragic loss in the treachery of guides. This, at least,
is apparent from some crumpled notes of travel found among his
possessions. At length, suddenly, dramatically, he came upon his man.
What arguments he used, no one can say. Perhaps Morton had grown sick
of his fool's errand, perhaps his heart was really touched, at last;
but he did turn about and make all due speed to America. Francis
accompanied him only to the fastest steamer route; and then dropped off
to take another boat home. His notes keep rigid silence concerning the
captain. Did he hate him to the last, or had hatred, like other spawn
of evil, sunk, for him, in the unplumbed depths of larger seas? Captain
Morton came home and found his wife still living. She died within a
week, and there