His quest for Fair had failed as utterly as that of Prince Gonzaga, and now he had crossed the ocean to pursue the search. Mrs. Howard came with him. She was fast failing in health, and said sadly that she was going home to die. It looked like it, for day by day she seemed to fade more rapidly. Bayard Lorraine came most punctually every day to see her, and one day she said to him wistfully: “I would give much to see one of those working girls who were Fair’s companions when she was a sewing girl in New York. I should like to hear something of her history in her sorrowful girlish days.” “I have found out where she worked. I will try to bring one of her girl friends to see you, if you wish,” he replied; and that was how it came about that Bayard Lorraine went one day to the factory and made known Mrs. Howard’s request. Mrs. Jones, the sensible forewoman, was still there, and she told Mr. Lorraine that Fair had been more intimate with Sadie Allen than any one else. She was married now, but she could give him her address. CHAPTER XXXI. FOR HER MOTHER’S SAKE. So Sadie Allen was at last face to face with Bayard Lorraine, the hero of her friend’s sad love story. “And no wonder she worshiped him, for he looks much more like a prince than that wicked Carl Bernicci,” she said to herself, as she handed Bayard the best chair in her little front room, the while she made up her mind to tell him Fair’s sad story as it really was, and as no one knew it but herself. He found himself almost moved to tears before she finished her eloquent recital. All the faults of the weak, ambitious mother were dragged to the light. “It was all her fault. She would not have let her daughter refuse that man if she had wished, for she had brought her up from the very beginning to marry rich if she could,” she said, and at last he began to see light upon Fair’s dark past. But it was only when she gave him the journal, the confidant of Fair’s girlish thoughts and hopes and fears, that he fully realized everything. It did not seem to him that he was doing wrong to read it. He who had loved her so well was longing to know her better, and to exonerate her, if possible, from all the fault that lay at her door. Who could tell him half so much as the book on whose pages her tortured girlish heart was laid bare? So while Sadie stooped to caress the toddling boy at her knee, he opened the pages at random, and here and there read words that went to his heart.