Twice Learmont himself had visited the house, and explored every nook and corner; and once the savage smith, in a state of semi-intoxication, had burst open the door, and rushed from room to room in the vain hope that Jacob Gray might have returned to his hiding-place.
After that it was the haunt of any desperate character who chose to enter it, for the door swung loosely by one hinge, and the winter’s wind, hail, and sleet, found free entrance to the crazy building.
Albert’s father, too, had been often, and lingered about the ruined street, until he could no longer cherish the remotest hope of being enabled to find a clue to the place of confinement of the beautiful girl, with whose weal or woe the happiness or sorrow of his dear son was so much mixed up.
Then he besought Albert to be patient, and trust in Heaven to send succour to her whom he loved; and when Albert himself could walk so far, he went with his father to the old house, and wandered for hours from room to room, pleasing himself with the thought that he was treading upon the spots oft trodden by Ada, and looking upon the objects most familiar to her eye.
The situation of secretary to Learmont, which Albert Seyton, little dreaming how closely he was connected with the fate of Ada, had endeavoured to obtain was filled up long before he was convalescent, and the state of health of the unhappy youth gave his father far more uneasiness than any consideration of his present prosperity in life.
Daily, however, the strength of Albert returned, and once again he commenced the search throughout London and its suburbs for the lost Ada. When wearied with some long perambulation, he would bend his steps to the Park, and sit in melancholy thought upon the same seat on which he had been sitting when he heard the voice of Ada. There, chewing the cud “of sweet and bitter fancy,” he would recline for hours, endeavouring to devise fresh schemes for the discovery of Ada, and trying to recollect some part of the city that he had omitted to visit. He would then wander homewards, listless, dispirited, and fatigued, to relate to his father the particulars and non-success of his toils.
It was upon one of these occasions that poor Albert was more than usually dispirited and weary, that his father said kindly to him,—