He did not send for Pluma, to divulge the wonderful discovery he had made. There was little sympathy or confidence between the father and daughter. "I can never sleep again until I have some clew to my child!" he cried, frantically wringing his hands. Hastily he touched the bell-rope. "Mason," he said to the servant who answered the summons, "pack my valise at once. I am going to take the first train to Baltimore. You have no time to lose." He did not hear the man's ejaculation of surprise as his eyes fell on the face of the master who stood before him with hair white as snow--so utterly changed in one short hour. "You couldn't possibly make the next train, sir; it leaves in a few moments." "I tell you you _must_ make it!" cried Basil Hurlhurst. "Go and do as I bid you at once! Don't stand there staring at me; you are losing golden moments. Fly at once, I tell you!" Poor old Mason was literally astounded. What had come over his kind, courteous master? "I have nothing that could aid them in the search," he said to himself, pacing restlessly up and down the room. "Ah! stay!--there is Evalia's portrait! The little one must look like her mother if she is living yet!" He went to his writing-desk and drew from a private drawer a little package tied with a faded ribbon, which he carefully untied with trembling fingers. It was a portrait on ivory of a beautiful, girlish, dimpled face, with shy, upraised blue eyes, a smiling rosebud mouth, soft pink cheeks, and a wealth of rippling, sunny-golden hair. "She must look like this," he whispered. "God grant that I may find her!" "Mr. Rex Lyon says, please may he see you a few moments, sir," said Mason, popping his black head in at the door. "No; I do not wish to see any one, and I will not see any one. Have you that satchel packed, I say?" "Yes, sir; it will be ready directly, sir," said the man, obediently. "Don't come to me with any more messages--lock everybody out. Do you hear me, Mason? I _will_ be obeyed!" "Yes, sir, I hear. No one shall disturb you." Again Basil Hurlhurst turned to the portrait, paying little attention to what was transpiring around him. "I shall put it at once in the hands of the cleverest detectives," he mused; "surely they will be able to find some trace of my lost darling." Seventeen years! Ah, what might have happened her in that time? The master of Whitestone Hall always kept a file of the Baltimore papers; he rapidly ran his eye down the different columns. "Ah, here is what I want," he exclaimed, stopping short. "Messrs. Tudor, Peck & Co., Experienced Detectives, ---- Street, Baltimore. They are noted for their skill. I will give the case into their hands. If they restore my darling child alive and well into my hands I will make them wealthy men--if she is dead, the blow will surely kill me." He heard voices debating in the corridor without. "Did you tell him I wished particularly to see him?" asked Rex, rather discomfited at the refusal.