Prince or king, it would matter nothing, I should hate him still, for I know now too well that it was not for his own sake, nor even for his boasted gold I accepted him, but only that through him I might meet again my hero, Bayard Lorraine. It was wrong for me to marry him with such thoughts in my heart, and Heaven has punished me for my sin, but I was young and ignorant. They dazzled me by their promises, and I thought I could tolerate George Lorraine for the sake of what he could bestow on me! He looked up at Sadie caressing her little child, and she saw that his eyes were wet. “You will let me take this with me, Mrs. Osborne?” “Certainly, sir. I expect you have more right to it than I have, for it all seems to be about you,” she answered. “And you will come with me to see Mrs. Howard?” She hesitated a moment, then said that she would leave little Charley with a neighbor and get ready to go at once. It seemed strange to our simple Sadie to be riding in a motor car by the side of Bayard Lorraine, and it seemed stranger yet to be going into that grand Fifth Avenue mansion; but Mrs. Howard speedily made her feel at home, for, grasping her hand warmly, she exclaimed at once: “You were my poor girl’s friend, and I bid you welcome with all my heart.” Then Sadie had to go over the whole story again. “Although her journal, which I gave to Mr. Lorraine, will tell you more than I can,” she said. Mrs. Howard wept when she heard the story of Fair’s injudicious training by her weak-minded, ambitious mother. “Poor little one, poor little one! She never said one word. She was most loyal to her mother, and took all the blame herself, while I was so hard upon her and believed her utterly base!” she exclaimed, with poignant remorse, and she felt that she would have given the whole world, had it been hers, to find the missing girl. Fair was thoroughly vindicated, her trials and temptations all understood, and she herself loved more than ever. But where was she? CHAPTER XXXII. THE MISSING GIRL. By the help of her maid, Fair had found a temporary refuge in London with Betty’s parents. The sale of her diamonds at a price much below their real value had enabled her to pay her board and remain in close hiding until the search for her in England had blown over. Betty, having lost her situation at the villa by the flight of Fair, soon came home, too, and not a day too early, for she had to nurse Fair through a long spell of fever, in which she very nearly lost the life that had now become so valueless and dreary that she regretted that she did not die. When she began to convalesce, she found that five months had elapsed since she fled from the villa. Her stock of money began to run low, and she knew that she would have to go to work to earn her daily bread. Her thoughts turned to Sadie Allen and the factory where she had worked for years, and a sudden resolve came to her.