While racking his brain to devise a means of instantly instituting a fresh search for her, his father roused himself from his previous lethargic condition, and gazed feebly around him: as his dull eyes fell upon Mark they brightened up, a smile of affection passed over his ghastly features, and he pressed the hand with which Mark clasped his.
Again his eyes wandered round the bedside twice ‘or thrice, then he turned to Mark with a disappointed look. His lips moved, and in a faint tone he murmured--“Flora.”
With an air of embarrassment, Mark responded--
“She is in her room--she is not well--frightened, unable to support this shocking event.”
“I have been harsh and selfish to her,” he said. “I have endeavoured to enforce my will against her hopes of future happiness, and she does not forget it now.”
He turned his face away with an air of pain and sorrowful discontent.
“Beware of exciting his mind in any shape,” whispered the surgeon. “He is too exhausted to sustain it.”
Mark bent over his father, and whispered in his ear--
“Do not wrong Flora, dear sir,” he said; “she will be here shortly, and her absence shall be satisfactorily explained to you.”
As the surgeon imposed implicit silence, Mark sat down to reflect upon what course was to be pursued respecting Flora’s unaccountable disappearance. It suddenly occurred to him that his friend Harry Vivian would be the individual to apply to for assistance. There was no doubt on his mind that he would do his utmost to ascertain what had befallen her, and to restore her in safety, if such happy issue was to attend the mystery of her absence.
As soon as the suggestion presented itself, he despatched a servant to the station with a telegraphic message to Vivian, paying for the return message, instructing him to come down to Harleydale at once, even to engage a special train, the cost of which he, Mark, would defray, for the matter on which he desired to confer with him admitted of no delay.
An answer was received in a brief period, which ran thus--
“_Vivian from home. Gone, not known where; return, not known token_.”
This was a climax; and he reseated himself by the invalid’s bedside, his mind tortured by doubts respecting the fate of his father and of his sister, and agonized by his remembrances of his parting with Lotte Clinton.