“I fear not, for her disappearance was so strange. Listen, mamma: they took her to Bellevue, and she did not recover consciousness the whole way. They supposed she would certainly die of her terrible fall. When they arrived at the hospital, she was left alone on a couch in the receiving-room for a few minutes, so the attendants say, and when the physician in charge went to see about her case, the little beauty was gone--had vanished as entirely as if she had been snatched up into the sky or swallowed by the earth, and left not a trace behind.” Mrs. Beresford smiled, and said: “But, as we know that neither one of those things happened to her, we may hope that she is safe. My own theory is that she was unhurt by the fall, and simply fainted from the shock. When she recovered from her swoon, she doubtless became alarmed at finding herself alone in that strange place, and ran away in a fright.” “Yes, that is what they think at the hospital; but what became of her, mamma, _afterward_?” She paused a moment, then added, anxiously: “You see, that was the day before yesterday, and she never returned to her boarding-house nor the store. So--_where is she now?_” And that question, asked by Mrs. Beresford’s pale lips, became the text on which many changes were rung afterward. A beautiful young girl had disappeared in the strangest way, and no clew to the mystery could be found. The hospital authorities, fearing they might be accused of neglect in the matter, kept the occurrence as quiet as possible; and when some rumor of it reached the ubiquitous reporter, and he came to make inquiries, they told him the girl was all right--oh, yes, and had returned to her friends in New Jersey. She had written back to say that she had recovered from her swoon and ran away in a fright, that was all. Might he see the letter? Certainly. But a hasty search proved unavailing. They were sorry, very sorry, but it must have gone into the waste-basket. So the reporter, satisfied that there was no sensation in the case, withdrew, and sought a spicy paragraph for his paper elsewhere. But, all the same, he had been cleverly gulled and cheated out of an interesting item. For the mystery of Florence Fane’s disappearance became one of the most unfathomable on record. The fair young girl returned neither to her New York boarding-house, nor to the store where she was employed, nor to her Mount Vernon home. It was not until a week had passed, and poor Mrs. Banks was beginning to fret over the non-reception of letters from Floy, that she was told the terrible truth of the girl’s disappearance. But, prompted by Otho, they made light of the matter, declaring that the giddy young girl would turn up when least expected. No doubt she had gone to stay with some new friends she had made in New York. Poor Mrs. Banks was heart-broken, but she could do nothing. Poverty tied her hands from making any search for her darling. She could only pine and endure in silence.