CHAPTER V

A NEW YORK BELLE


Meanwhile all our efforts to obtain information in regard to the fate
or whereabouts of the missing girl, had so far proved utterly futile.
Even the advertisements inserted by Mrs. Daniels had produced no
effect; and frustrated in my scheme I began to despair, when the
accounts of that same Mrs. Daniels' strange and unaccountable
behavior during these days of suspense, which came to me through
Fanny, (the pretty housemaid at Mr. Blake's, whose acquaintance I had
lately taken to cultivating,) aroused once more my dormant energies
and led me to ask myself if the affair was quite as hopeless as it
seemed.

"If she was a ghost," was her final expression on the subject, "she
could'nt go peramberlating this house more than she does. It seems
as if she could'nt keep still a minute. Upstairs and down, upstairs
and down, till we're most wild. And so white as she is and so
trembling! Why her hands shake so all the time she never dares lift a
dish off the table. And then the way she hangs about Mr. Blake's door
when he's at home! She never goes in, that's the oddest part of it,
but walks up and down before it, wringing her hands and talking to
herself just like a mad woman. Why, I have seen her almost put her
hand on the knob twice in an afternoon perhaps, then draw back as if
she was afraid it would burn her; and if by any chance the door