They reached home at last. Georgia was handed out first, she waited for Zuleime, who followed. She wished to draw the girl’s arm within her own. But Zuleime, turning on her a dilated, strained, fiery gaze, fled past her into the house. And then the lady saw, with a shudder, that it was indeed the fires of incipient madness that kindled the lambent flame in the girl’s eyes! When they were all assembled in the parlor, around the evening fire, with books, and music, and light needle-work— “Where is Zuleime?” asked her father. “She has retired to her room, very much fatigued,” replied his wife, and the subject dropped. The next morning, when the family gathered around the breakfast-table, the youngest daughter was still missing. “Where is Zuleime? Why doesn’t Zuleime come? Carolyn, have you seen your sister this morning? How is she?” asked old Mr. Clifton. Carolyn replied that she had not seen her since the preceding evening. “Send some one, then, to her chamber, to see how she is, and whether she will join us at breakfast, or have anything sent up to her room. Or—stay! Carolyn, don’t send—go yourself, my love, to your sister, it will be only kind.” Carolyn left the table, and went up stairs, and after an absence of fifteen or twenty minutes, returned, and announced, with a pale cheek, that Zuleime’s chamber had not been occupied during the night—that she herself was no where to be found in the house—and that no one of the servants had seen her since the evening before! A dreadful suspicion instantly seized upon all who remembered her wild and moody looks and manners of the preceding few days; and they simultaneously arose from the table, and with looks of alarm, dispersed in various directions, in quest of the missing girl. The house, kitchen, out-buildings, negro quarters, garden, vineyard, orchard, the plantation and the woods were successively and vainly searched. Messengers were dispatched to Hardbargain and to the neighboring plantations, with inquiries that proved fruitless. Old Mr. Clifton ran up and down the house and grounds like one distracted. At last, near night, traces were discovered of the lost one. Upon the edge of the stream, where the banks were soft and deep, small foot-prints were seen—and half-way down the bank her little slipper was found, with its toe deep in the mud, and the heel sticking up, as if lost there in the downward run of its owner—and from the branch of a sapling near, a shred of her crimson dress fluttered, as if caught and torn off in the same swift descent. Old Mr. Clifton walked down there, to see the spot; but he was _carried_ back. And before the next sun arose, Mrs. Georgia Clifton had her heart’s first desire. She was a widow. CHAPTER XIX. CONFESSION. I was so young—I loved him so—I had No mother—God forgot me—and I fell! BROWNING—BLOT ON THE ‘SCUTCHEON.