tion. That is all we
know."

"And you have not the slightest clew beyond this?"

"Not the slightest. He spent all his spare time with Dolly, you know;
so there is not even any place of resort, or club, or anything, where we
might go to make inquiries about him."

Gowan's countenance fell. He felt the girl's distress keenly, apart from
his own pain.

"The whole affair seems very much against us," he said; "but he may--I
say he _may_ be in London still. I am inclined to believe he is myself.
When the first passion of excitement was over, he would find himself
weaker than he fancied he was. It would not be so easy to cut himself
off from the old life altogether. He would long so inexpressibly to
see Dolly again that he could not tear himself away. I think we may
be assured that even if he is not in London, at least he has not left
England."

"That was what I have been afraid of," said Aimee, "that he might have
left England altogether."

"I cannot think he has," Gowan returned.

They were both silent for a moment. Aimee sat twisting Miss MacDowlas's
letter in her fingers, fresh tears gathering in her eyes.

"It is all the harder to bear," she said next, "because Dolly has always
seemed so much of a _reality_ to us. If she had been a pale, ethereal
sort of girl, it might not seem such a shock; but she never was. She
even used to say she could not bear those frail, ethereal people in
books, who were always dying and saying touching things just at the
proper time, and who knew exactly when to call up their agonized friends
to their bedside to see how pathetically and decorously they made their
exit. Oh, my poor darling! To think that she should be fading away and
dying just in the same way! I cannot make it seem real. I cannot think
of her without her color, and her jokes, and her bits of acting, and her
little vanities. She will not be our Dolly at all if they have left her.
There is a dress of hers up-stairs now,--a dress she couldn't bear.
And I remember so well how she lost her temper when she was making it,
because it would n't fit. And when I went into the parlor she was crying
over it, and Grif was trying so hard to console her that at last
she laughed. I can see her now, with the tears in her eyes, looking
half-vexed and half-comforted. And Tod, too,--how fond she was of Tod,
and how proud of him! Ah, Tod," in a fresh burst, "when you grow up,
the daisies may have been growing for many a year over poor littl