A Life Sentence. Sergeant Adeline
noted the rigid lines about Mr. Lepel's mouth as he stepped forward from the window and spoke in a low stern tone.
"Was it impossible to prevent? It seems incredible to me. I hope"—almost savagely—"that you have punished for her extraordinary folly the woman who did the mischief?"
"She has been sent away," said Sister Louisa sadly; "but her punishment has not mended matters, Mr. Lepel. The excitement in the school was immense—unprecedented. We felt that it would be incumbent upon us to send Janie away for a time—until the story was to some extent forgotten."
"And you told her so? Women have hearts of stone!" cried Hubert. He forgot that his conduct had not hitherto proved that his own was very soft.
"I hope that we were not unkind to her," said Sister Louisa, with gentle dignity. "It was to be for a time only. We wanted her to go down to Leicestershire with two of our Sisters for a few weeks; we thought it advisable that she should have a change. The Reverend Mother herself mentioned the plan to her. I noticed that she changed color very much when it was proposed. She made one of her sharp speeches—quite in her old way, 'I see—I am not good enough to associate with the other girls,' she said. We told her that it was no such thing—that we loved her as much as ever—that it was only for her own good that she was to leave St. Elizabeth's for a time; but I am afraid that it was all of no avail. She listened to what we said with a face of stone. And in the morning—in the morning, Mr. Lepel, we found that she was gone."
"Gone! Without the knowledge of any of you?"
"Entirely. She must have stolen out in the middle of the night when every one was asleep. It is a wonder that no one heard her; but she is very light-footed and very nimble. She must have climbed the garden fence. She had left a folded piece of paper on her bed—it was a note for me."
"May I see it?" said Hubert eagerly.
Sifter Louisa drew it from among the folds of her long black robes. He turned away from her while he read the few blurred hastily-written lines in which Janie said good-bye to the woman whom she had loved. He did not want Sister Louisa to see his face. He was more touched by her story than he liked to show.
"Dearest Mother Louisa," Janie had written, in her unformed girlish hand—"Don't be more angry and grieved than you can help! If they had all been like you, I would have stayed. But everyone will despise me now. I shall go to some place where nobody knows me, and earn my own living. Please forgive me! I do love you and St. Elizabeth's very much; but I must go away—I must! I can't bear to stay now that everybody knows all about me. I shall change my name, so you need not look for me."
The letter was simply signed "Janie"—nothing more. Robert handed it back to its owner with a grave word of thanks.
"How is it," he said, "that I did not hear of her leaving you before I came to Winstead? Mrs. Rumbold is supposed to give me information of anything of importance respecting the girl. I have not had a word from her."
"Nor have we, although we wrote and telegraphed at once. I am afraid that she is away from home. We did not know your address, or that you were interested in her."
"Of course not. I kept that matter to myself," said Hubert gloomily. "It seems that it was foolish of me to do so. May I ask what steps you have taken to discover the poor child?"
The Sisters, he found, had not been remiss in their endeavors. They had placed themselves in communication with a London detective; they had consulted the local police; they had made inquiries at railway stations and roadside inns. But as yet they had heard nothing of the fugitive. The girl was strong and active, a good walker and runner; it seemed pretty evident that she had not gone by train or by ordinary roads. She must have plunged into the fields and taken a cross-country route in some direction. Probably she had gone to London; and in London she was tolerably safe from pursuit.
"Had she money?" Hubert asked of Sister Louisa.
"Not a penny."
"She will be driven back to you by hunger."
"I am afraid not. She was too proud to return to us of her own free will."
"Is she good-looking?"
"No, I think not," said the Sister, a little doubtfully. "She was tall for her age, thin and unformed; she had a brown skin and hair cut short like a boy's. Her eyes were beautiful—large and dark; but she was too pale and awkward-looking to be pretty. When she had a color—oh, then it was a different matter!"
Hubert took away with him a full description of Jane Wood's clothes and probable appearance, and on reaching London went straight to the office of a private detective. To this man he told as much of Jane's story as was necessary, and declared himself ready to spend any reasonable amount of money so long as there was a possibility of finding the lost girl. The detective was not very hopeful of success; the runaway had already had two days' start—enough for a complete change of identity. Probably she had put on boy's clothes and was lurking about the streets of London.
"But she had no money!" Hubert urged.
"She'll get some somehow," the detective answered quietly.
For some days and weeks Hubert lived in a fever of suspense. He had set his heart on finding the girl and sending her back to St. Elizabeth's—or elsewhere. Some kind of home must be secured to her. For the sake of his own peace of mind, he must know that she was safe. He could not forgive Mrs. Rumbold for having been absent in Switzerland when Sister Louisa wrote to her of Jane Wood's flight, and thus being unable to inform him of it immediately. He had an unreasonable conviction that, if he had known at once of Janie's disappearance, he would have succeeded in tracking her. But for this opinion he really had no ground at all.
So days and weeks and months went on, and brought with them the conviction that the girl was lost for ever. Nothing was heard of her either at Winstead or at Beechfield, and Hubert Lepel was obliged at last to acknowledge that all his efforts had been in vain. The girl refused to be benefited any longer; the wild blood in her veins had asserted itself; she was probably leading the outcast life from which he thought that he had rescued her; she had gone down on the tide of poverty and vice and crime which floods the London streets. He shuddered sometimes when he thought of it. He haunted the doors of theatres, the courts and alleys of East London, looking sombrely for a face which he would not have known if he had seen it. He fancied that Andrew Westwood's daughter would bear her history in her eyes—the great dark eyes that he remembered as her sole beauty when she was a child.
It was a mad fancy, born of his desire to atone for a wrong that he had done to an innocent man. The wrong seemed greater than ever when it darkened the life of a weak young girl and tortured the heart of the innocent man's own child.
CHAPTER X.
Eight years had passed away since the tragedy that brought the little village of Beechfield into luckless notoriety. During those eight years what changes had taken place! Even at quiet rustic Beechfield many things had come to pass. Old Mr. Rumbold had been gathered to his fathers, and Mrs. Rumbold had gone to live with friends in London. The new Rector was young, energetic, good-looking, and unmarried. At the Hall there were changes too. Enid Vane had grown from a delicate child into a lovely girl of seventeen. The house was no longer chill and desolate—brightness seemed to have come back to it with her growth—a brightness which even the General, saddened as he had been by his brother's death, could not resist. He had taken his own way of contributing to the cheerfulness of the Hall. Six months after Mrs. Sydney Vane's death he had married Florence Lepel, as Miss Vane had predicted that he would, and a little boy of five years old was now running about the Hall gardens and calling the General "father." The old man positively adored this little lad, and believed him to be perfection. He was fond of Enid and of his wife, but he doated on the child. He seemed indeed to love him more than did the mother of the boy. Florence Lepel was not perhaps of a very loving disposition, but it was remarkable that she apparently