"I have searched in vain for our Constance. But how could it be otherwise? Who should know more about her than myself? I have asked some of our old acquaintances if they ever heard of her since her marriage. They shake their heads and look at me as though they thought me demented. Laura Wykoff, you know, married some years ago. I called upon her. She knew little or nothing; but said, she had heard that her husband who had become dissipated had left her and gone off to Baltimore. She thought it highly probable that she had been dead some years. She treated me coldly enough. But I feel nothing for myself. Poor, dear child! where can thy lot be cast? Perhaps, how dreadful the thought! she may have dragged her drooping, dying form past our dwelling, once her peaceful home, and looked her last look upon the door shut to her for ever, while the cold winds of winter chilled her heart in its last pulsations. Oh, I fear we have murdered our poor child! Every meagre-looking, shrinking female form I pass on the street, makes my heart throb. 'Perhaps that is Constance,' I will say, and hasten to read the countenance of the forlorn one. But I turn away, and sigh; 'where, where can she be?' "Since writing this, I have seen a young man who knew her husband. He says, that after the failure of a house in which Wilmer was employed, he went to Baltimore and took Constance with him. He says, he knows this to be so, because he was well acquainted with Wilmer, and shook hands with him on the steamboat when he went away. I hinted to him what I had heard about Wilmer's leaving her. He repelled the insinuation with warmth, and said, that he, Wilmer, would have died rather than cause Constance a painful feeling--that she certainly did go with him, for when he parted with Wilmer, Constance was leaning on his arm. He says, she looked pale and troubled; and mentioned that they had with them a sweet little baby. Oh, how my heart yearns after my child! "I have since learned the name of the firm in Baltimore in whose employment he was, shortly after he went there. To-morrow morning I shall go to that city. You shall hear from me on my arrival." Nearly a week passed before Mrs. Jackson received further intelligence from her husband. I will not attempt to describe her feelings during that long time. In suffering or joy we discover how relative and artificial are all our ideas of time. The next letter ran thus:-- "Here I am in Baltimore, but it seems no nearer finding our child than when I was in New York. The firm in whose employment Wilmer was shortly after his arrival in Baltimore, has been dissolved some years; and I am told that neither of the partners is now in this city. I have not been able to learn the name of a single clerk who was in their store. I feel disheartened, yet more eager every day to find our lost one. Where can she be?