“Why,” was the unanswerable argument of many, “has nothing been heard of the matter since? If that girl had really been Miss Ballantine, and that simple old man her father, do you think we should have heard no more on the subject? The imposition was immediately detected, and the whole matter quashed at once.”
Failing to create any interest in the minds of those he had supposed would have been most eager to prosecute inquiry, but led on by desperate hope, Perkins had an advertisement inserted in all the city papers, asking the individuals who had presented themselves some eighteen months before as Mr. Ballantine and his daughter, to call upon him at his rooms in the hotel. A week passed, but no one responded to the call. He then tried to ascertain the names of the physicians who, it was said, had attended an old man for imbecility of mind, at the request of a daughter who seemed most deeply devoted to him. In this he at length proved successful.
“I did attend such a case,” was at last replied to his oft-repeated question.
“Then, my dear sir,” said Perkins, in a deeply excited voice, “tell me where they are.”
“That, my young friend, is, really out of my power,” returned the physician. “It is some time since I visited them.”
“What was their name?” asked the young man.
“Glenn, if I recollect rightly.”
“Glenn! Glenn!” said Perkins, starting, and then pausing to think. “Was the daughter a tall, pale, slender girl, with light brown hair?”
“She was. And though living in the greatest seclusion was a woman of refinement and education.”
“You can direct me, of course, to the house where they live?”
“I can. But you will not, I presume, find them there. The daughter, when I last saw her, said that she had resolved on taking her father on to Boston, in order to try the effects of the discipline of the Massachusetts Insane Hospital upon him, of which she had seen a very favorable report. I encouraged her to go, and my impression is that she is already at the North.”
“Glenn! Glenn!” said Perkins, half aloud, and musingly, as the doctor ceased. “Yes! it must be, it is the same! She was often seen visiting Charlestown, and going in the direction of the hospitals. Yes! yes! It must be she!”
Waiting only long enough in New Orleans to satisfy himself that the persons alluded to by the physician had actually removed from the place where they resided some months before, and with the declared intention of going North, Perkins started home by the quickest route from New Orleans to the North. It was about the middle of February when he arrived in Boston. Among the first he met was Milford, to whom he had written from New Orleans a full account of the reason of his visiting that place so suddenly, and of his failure to discover the persons of whom he was in search.
“My dear friend, I am glad to see you back!” said Milford, earnestly, as he grasped the hand of Perkins. “I wrote you a week ago, but, of course, that letter has not been received, and you are doubtless in ignorance of what has come to my knowledge within the last few days.”
“Tell me, quickly, what you mean!” said Perkins, grasping the arm of his friend.
“Be calm, and I will tell you,” replied Milford. “About a week ago I learned, by almost an accident, from the transfer clerk in the bank, that the young woman whom we knew as Lizzy Glenn had, early in the fall, come to the bank with certificates of stock, and had them transferred to the Massachusetts Insane Hospital, to be held by that institution so long as one Hubert Ballantine remained an inmate of its walls.”
“Well?” eagerly gasped Perkins.
“I know no more. It is for you to act in the matter; I could not.”
Without a moment’s delay, Perkins procured a vehicle, and in a little while was at the door of the institution.
“Is there a Mr. Ballantine in the asylum?” he asked, in breathless eagerness, of one of the attendants who answered his summons.
“No, sir,” was the reply.
“But,” said Perkins in a choking voice, “I have been told that there was a man here by that name.”
“So there was. But he left here about five days ago, perfectly restored to reason.”
Perkins leaned for a moment or two against the wall to support himself. His knees bent under him. Then he asked in an agitated voice—
“Is he in Boston?”
“I do not know. He was from the South, and his daughter has, in all probability, taken him home.”
“Where did they go when they left here?”
But the attendant could not tell. Nor did any one in the institution know. The daughter had never told her place of residence.
Excited beyond measure, Perkins returned to Boston, and went to see Berlaps. From him he could learn nothing. It was two months or so since she had been there for work. Michael was then referred to; he knew nothing, but he had a suspicion that Mrs. Gaston got work for her.
“Mrs Gaston!” exclaimed Perkins, with a look of astonishment. “Who is Mrs. Gaston?”
“She is one of our seamstresses,” replied Berlaps.
“Where does she live?”
The direction was given, and the young man hurried to the place. But the bird had flown. Five or six days before, she had gone away in a carriage with a young lady who had been living with her, so it was said, and no one could tell what had become of her or her children.
Confused, perplexed, anxious, and excited, Perkins turned away and walked slowly home, to give himself time to reflect. His first fear was that Eugenia and her father, for he had now no doubt of their being the real actors in
