"John, John!" cried Mrs. Desmond, "you must interfere." But Helen only laughed. "You've told me to go. I'm going," she said, and walked away. Straight down-stairs she walked, singing as she went a snatch of an Indian native song. In the hall a comforter belonging to her father caught her eye. She picked it up and twisted it round her head and throat, then opening the hall door she passed out without a moment's hesitation into the fast-gathering darkness. The door closed heavily behind her. Upstairs the colonel heard it and sprang to his foot. "My God!" he cried, "she has kept her word. She has gone. Quick! I must follow her." "Nonsense, John!" exclaimed his wife; "lie still. A servant shall go at once. There is no need for alarm." As she spoke she laid her hand on his arm, but he shook it off impatiently. "Don't dare to detain me," he said sternly. "If any evil happens to that child I shall never forgive you." "John, John!" cried Mrs. Desmond, throwing herself on the sofa and bursting into real tears. "John, listen to me--" But it was of no avail. Whether the colonel even heard his wife's last appeal seems doubtful. Without pausing or turning his head, he walked straight down-stairs and out into the street just as Helen had done before him. Darkness was falling fast. The air had turned chilly, with a bite of the east in it. Fresh from the warm drawing-room, Colonel Desmond shivered as he looked round in every direction, trying in vain to discover some trace of the fugitive. But to all appearance she had vanished, and the colonel, his alarm increasing every moment, as the passers-by whom he interrogated merely shook their heads in answer to his excited questions as to whether they had noticed a little girl without hat or bonnet going by, was forced to enlist a policeman to aid him in his search.