From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the
description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a
handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together.
In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering
large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord
Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and
no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly
deed--a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the
family of the girl he had abducted.

When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his
infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far
from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the
deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been
restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from
this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the
runaway than her abductor.

For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail,
until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough,
to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant
at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in
fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a
young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing
girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below
the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.

"It must be my daughter!" exclaimed Lady Kingsborough. "But who is the
gentleman? Pray describe him as fully as you can." "He is tall and