Lady Montfort started; the shadow of another form than her own fell upon
the sward. George Morley stood behind her, his finger on his lips."
Hush," he said in a whisper, see, Sophy is looking for me up the river.
I knew she would be--I stole this way on purpose--for I would speak to
you before I face her questions."

"What is the matter? you alarm me," said Lady Montfort, on gaining a part
of the grounds more remote from the river, to which George had silently
led the way.

"Nay, my dear cousin, there is less cause for alarm than for anxious
deliberation, and that upon more matters than those which directly relate
to our poor fugitive. You know that I long shrunk from enlisting the
police in aid of our search. I was too sensible of the pain and offence
which such an application would occasion Waife--(let us continue so to
call him)--and the discovery of it might even induce him to put himself
beyond our reach, and quit England. But his prolonged silence, and my
fears lest some illness or mishap might have befallen him, together with
my serious apprehensions of the effect which unrelieved anxiety might
produce on Sophy's health, made me resolve to waive former scruples.
Since I last saw you I have applied to one of the higher police-officers
accustomed to confidential investigations of a similar nature. The next
day he came to tell me that he had learned that a friend of his, who had
been formerly a distinguished agent in the detective police, had been
engaged for months in tracking a person whom he conjectured to be the
same as the one whom I had commissioned him to discover, and with
somewhat less caution and delicacy than I had enjoined. The fugitive's
real name had been given to this ex-agent--the cause for search, that he
had abducted and was concealing his granddaughter from her father. It
was easy for me to perceive why this novel search had hitherto failed, no