'Out in a night like this--in a foreign city, more than half the inhabitants of which speak nothing but Flemish, where can she be?' he thought. 'Why does she not make an effort to get back to the hotel?' He drove back to the Théâtre des Variétés, where the music and the dancing were still in full progress, to repeat his inquiries in vain; when morning dawned the snow had ceased, but there was no appearance of Alison. 'This will kill her father!' was now Cadbury's thought. Had an accident befallen her? With earliest dawn he had messengers despatched to all the hospitals and gendarme stations, but in vain. No accident had happened, nor had anyone answering to the description of Alison been seen. Her absence could no longer be concealed from her horrified father, who at once concluded that she must have eloped with Goring, of whose predicament and whereabouts Cadbury had kept him ignorant, so he was not ill-pleased to let him think so. Rage at the adventurer, as he deemed Goring, acted like a spur on Sir Ranald. He left his sick couch and seemed to make a struggle to get well that he might join in the search and trace _them_ out. Cadbury had not been without daring ideas of luring Alison away from Sir Ranald and compromising her; but now she was he knew not where, and in the hands of a man perhaps more unscrupulous than himself! His memory was now full of the hundred terrible stories he had read in the public prints of English girls entrapped to Belgium and never heard of again, and, though his mind was always prone to evil, he was exasperated as well as dismayed when days passed and no tidings were heard of the lost one. It was winter in earnest now. The banks of the Scheldt were fringed by masses of ice, and ice covered all the great bassins of Antwerp, while stainless snow shrouded all the surrounding country, and the stone Madonnas at the street corners had a chill and deadly aspect, for it was weather to make hands blue and noses red, as the frost was keen and strong. CHAPTER XIX. THE CAFE AU PROGRES. The two Englishmen to whom we have referred--Sir Jasper Dehorsey and Mr. Tom Hawksleigh--saw how Cadbury and Alison were for the time hopelessly separated by the pleasure-seeking crowd, and hastened at once to improve the occasion by taking advantage of the confusion and of her excessive dismay. After a word or two of hasty instructions whispered to his friend, Sir Jasper approached Alison, and said, with a profound bow, 'They are rather _sans cérémonie_ here, but don't be alarmed. I shall take care of you. Trust to me, and permit me,' he added, drawing her little hand over his left arm, and leading her away in a direction opposite to where he knew Cadbury was doing his utmost to get free of the crowd. 'Do not be alarmed,' he resumed, 'we shall soon restore you to your friend.'