“Surely the girl has some other friends in the world, and I hope she’s gone to them,” she thought. “I am frightened at the strange interest my son has suddenly displayed in this missing girl. Last night was spent in the search for her, and this morning he looks careworn and haggard. What if he is unconsciously falling in love with this beautiful creature whom no one would care to marry, on account of her mother’s deep disgrace?” She sighed deeply. She was proud--very proud. She could not contemplate such a thing without horror. “Yet what can I do?” she thought helplessly. “Francis will do as he pleases. There’s no fool like an old fool, they say, and my son is really getting on in years--thirty-two his next birthday. Italy is too young for him, but there’s Alys just of a suitable age, and a better match. She loves the ground he walks on, too, and if he would only marry her I would be quite happy.” But it is not given to many people in this world to be “quite happy,” and the Fates we pursue elude us ever. What is to be, will be. Francis Murray, with all his years and experience, was stumbling blindly forward on a road that he called Duty. He had no difficulty in finding out the police-station where the beautiful somnambulist had been detained until she could give some account of herself or her friends. The elderly matron was cheerful and polite. She told him that her charge had been very strange--like one dazed--and refused to tell her name, begging for clothes in which to go away. “She is asleep on my little cot now, sir, but if you wish I will open the door and you may look in to see if it’s the one you’re looking for,” she said kindly. He had told her simply that a young schoolgirl, an habitual sleep-walker, had wandered away from her home last night. Her friends had searched for her in vain, and were glad to find out her whereabouts from the morning papers, but thankful that she had declined to give her name. If it proved to be the girl he thought, he hoped no more facts might get into the papers. As he said this, the gentleman slipped the good soul a bank-bill, murmuring something about “a new bonnet.” Her heart was instantly won, and, whispering back that she would see that his wishes were obeyed, she opened the door and beckoned him to approach. He followed with a quickened heart-throb, and gazed eagerly into the tiny apartment where, on a narrow cot-bed lay the form of a young girl at rest, the white coverlet drawn up to her shoulders, a mass of tumbled, black silken curls straying over the pillow, her cheeks flushed with the warmth of slumber, her red lips parted a little with now and then a sobbing breath, as though she could not forget her sorrows, even in sleep--Italy! “It is she!” he said, in a strange voice, and beckoned to the maid. “Go in and awake her. Help her to dress, and tell her I am waiting to take her home,” he said. He withdrew and closed the door. In a little while the maid came out again.