“Alva!” cried Mrs. Beresford, gazing at her daughter in consternation.

She grew pale and shuddered as she spoke, for the thought of the lovely girl’s terrible accident touched her deeply.

“Is it not a terrible disappointment?” cried Alva. “Perhaps I shall never find her now, and my ‘Cupid’ will never be finished.”

“But surely the girl will be found again!” Mrs. Beresford cried, consolingly; but Alva shook her head.

“I fear not, for her disappearance was so strange. Listen, mamma: they took her to Bellevue, and she did not recover consciousness the whole way. They supposed she would certainly die of her terrible fall. When they arrived at the hospital, she was left alone on a couch in the receiving-room for a few minutes, so the attendants say, and when the physician in charge went to see about her case, the little beauty was gone—had vanished as entirely as if she had been snatched up into the sky or swallowed by the earth, and left not a trace behind.”

Mrs. Beresford smiled, and said:

“But, as we know that neither one of those things happened to her, we may hope that she is safe. My own theory is that she was unhurt by the fall, and simply fainted from the shock. When she recovered from her swoon, she doubtless became alarmed at finding herself alone in that strange place, and ran away in a fright.”

“Yes, that is what they think at the hospital; but what became of her, mamma, afterward?”

She paused a moment, then added, anxiously:

“You see, that was the day before yesterday, and she never returned to her boarding-house nor the store. So—where is she now?”

And that question, asked by Mrs. Beresford’s pale lips, became the text on which many changes were rung afterward.

A beautiful young girl had disappeared in the strangest way, and no clew to the mystery could be found.

The hospital authorities, fearing they might be accused of neglect in the matter, kept the occurrence as quiet as possible; and when some rumor of it reached the ubiquitous reporter, and he came to make inquiries, they told him the girl was all right—oh, yes, and had returned to her friends in New Jersey. She had written back to say that she had recovered from her swoon and ran away in a fright, that was all. Might he see the letter? Certainly.

But a hasty search proved unavailing. They were sorry, very sorry, but it must have gone into the waste-basket.

So the reporter, satisfied that there was no sensation in the case, withdrew, and sought a spicy paragraph for his paper elsewhere. But, all the same, he had been cleverly gulled and cheated out of an interesting item.

For the mystery of Florence Fane’s disappearance became one of the most unfathomable on record.

The fair young girl returned neither to her New York boarding-house, nor to the store where she was employed, nor to her Mount Vernon home.

It was not until a week had passed, and poor Mrs. Banks was beginning to fret over the non-reception of letters from Floy, that she was told the terrible truth of the girl’s disappearance.

But, prompted by Otho, they made light of the matter, declaring that the giddy young girl would turn up when least expected. No doubt she had gone to stay with some new friends she had made in New York.

Poor Mrs. Banks was heart-broken, but she could do nothing. Poverty tied her hands from making any search for her darling. She could only pine and endure in silence.

The Maurys did not see that there was anything to do but wait for developments.

In all the world there seemed to be no friend to seek for the missing girl.

And yet, undreamed of by the Maurys, there was a search going on for Floy.

It seemed like a grim mocking of fate that the Beresfords, who would have rejoiced to hear of the death of St. George’s sweetheart, should have put themselves to great expense to trace Florence Fane in her mysterious disappearance. Yet they had done so.

Mrs. Beresford was at heart a noble lady, and, where personal pride did not goad her to extremes, a firm friend.

She had taken a strong, admiring interest in the pretty young salesgirl whose beauty had charmed her, and whose pride had amused her while it also inspired respect.

She would not have owned it to herself, but Floy’s blue eyes had looked straight into her heart and won herself a place there.

She had conceived the idea of employing the young girl to act as a model for Alva, and her disappointment was almost as keen as Alva’s when she learned the truth.

Each day they both felt the disappointment more keenly, until from the mother came the startling suggestion:

“Why not put a private detective on her track?”

“Mamma, you seem to feel sure that the girl is alive, while on my side I think that her brain was injured by her terrible fall, and that she left the hospital in a dazed condition and met death in her wanderings.”

“I have a strange feeling that the girl is alive and will be found again, dear, so I shall put a detective on the case at once,” returned Mrs. Beresford; and she sent for one in whom she knew she could place confidence, and sent him on the quest.