t of his new disappointment
crushing and stifling his spirit. He traversed the streets with a rapid
pace, not knowing nor caring whither he went, if he only kept in motion.
His own torturing thoughts pursued him like haunting fiends, driving him
mercilessly hither and thither, and he sped onward and onward, as though
by increased celerity he could fly from his intangible persecutors.

Now sprang up the tantalizing suggestion, that, as Lady Vivian had never
seen Madeleine, the latter had presented herself under a feigned name,
for the sake of concealing her rank, and baffling the friends who sought
to discover her abode. Was not _that_ very possible, very natural? He
recalled the tall, finely-moulded form, of which he had caught a glimpse
in Lady Langdon's _salon_, and for awhile he cherished this chimera;
then its place was usurped by one more painful: Madeleine was perhaps
travelling alone, subjected by her very beauty to the curious scrutiny,
the heartless insults of brutal men; and, perchance, through her
ignorance of the world, trapped into some snare from which she could
never be extricated unharmed. Then his mind was filled with the horrible
idea that, in her friendliness and despair, finding no place of refuge
on earth, she had flung away her burdensome life with violent hands.
Nothing was more improbable than that a being endowed with her
self-controlled, serene, sorrow-accepting temperament, should be driven
to such an act of unholy madness. Yet Maurice allowed the frightful
fantasy to work within his brain until it clothed itself with a shape
like reality, and drove him to the verge of distraction.

Where could she have gone? _Where? oh, where?_

Hundreds of times he asked himself that perplexing question! All the
pursuing demons seemed to shout it in his ears, and defy him to answer.
If she had escaped the perils he most dreaded, where had she hidden
herself? Perhaps she had only taken out a passport for England, with a
view of throwing those who sought to track her steps, off the right
scent. If she had gone to England, her passport must have been _vised_
as she passed through Paris. If it had not been presented at the _bureau
des passeports_, she must have remained in Paris. If she had conceived
any plans by which she thought to earn a livelihood, where could they so
well be carried into execution? In that great city she might reasonably
hope to be lost in the crowd, and draw breath untraced and unknown. I