"I left San Francisco several months ago and have been stopping in several places, and that is why your letters were so long in reaching me. They both came in the same mail, and I wrote to San Francisco to see what I could learn with regard to your mother. It seems that the private asylum of Dr. Haynes was broken up, as there were only three patients when Mrs. Smith left, and it did not pay. Soon after your father died in Santa Barbara, your mother was removed from the asylum by a gentleman whose name I have thus far been unable to learn. I thought it must have been some relative, but if you know nothing of it my theory is wrong. Dr. Haynes went at once with his family to Europe, and is travelling on the continent. His address is, Care of Munroe & Co., Bankers, 7 Rue Scribe. Paris. Write him again, as he must know who took your mother from his care. He may not be in Paris now, but your letter will reach him in time. If there is anything I can do to help you, I will gladly do it. If you were in San Francisco you might find some of the attendants in the asylum, who could give you the information you desire. "Yours, very truly, "J.P. ALLING, M.D." It was Ruby who brought the letter one evening two or three days before Eloise expected to make her first appearance in school. Mrs. Biggs and Tim were out and Eloise was alone. Tearing open the envelope, she read it quickly, and then with the bitterest cry Ruby had ever heard, covered her face with her hands and sobbed: "My mother! Oh, my mother!" "Is she dead?" Ruby asked, and Eloise replied, "Worse than that, perhaps. I don't know where she is. Read what it says." She gave the letter to Ruby, who read it twice; then, sitting down by Eloise and passing her arm around her, she said, "I don't understand what it means. Was your mother in a lunatic asylum?" "Oh, don't call it that!" Eloise answered. "It was a private asylum in San Francisco,--very private and select, father said, but I never quite believed her crazy. She was always quiet and sad and peculiar, and hated the business, and so did I."