languishing widow, secluded carefully from the vulgar gaze, heard never a word of Madeline's flight. And when, later, the fact was revealed to her, none save old Hagar could have named the precise date of the event. So even wise Cora never connected the fate of the unfortunate girl with the doings of Lucian Davlin.

CHAPTER VI.

A WARNING.

Early morning in the great city, but the buzz and clamor were fairly under way, and the streets as full of busy, pushing, elbowing life as if night and silence had never rested above the tall roofs and chimney pots.

With the rattle of the first cart wheel on the pavement,[65] Madeline had started broad awake. As the din increased, and sleep refused to return to the startled senses, all unused to these city sounds, she arose, and completing her toilet with some haste, seated herself at her window to look out upon the scene so new to her.

[65]

What a world of strange emotions passing and repassing beneath her eye! What hopes and fears; what carelessness and heartache! How they hurried to and fro, each apparently intent upon his own thoughts and purposes.

She gazed down until her vision wearied of the motley, ever-changing, yet ever the same crowd; and then she reclined in the downy depths of a great easy chair, closed her eyes, and thought of Lucian. After all, what meaning had this restless moving throng for her? Only one; Lucian. What was this surging sea of humanity to her save that, because of its roar and clamor, they two were made more isolated, therefore nearer to each other?

The morning wore away, and she began to realize how very soon she should be with her hero, and then no more of separation. Her heart bounded at this thought.

Some one tapped softly at her door. She opened it quickly, thinking only of Lucian. It was not Lucian, however, but a veiled woman who stepped within the room, closing the door as she came.

Madeline fell back a pace, and gazed at the intruder with a look of startled inquiry which was, however, free from fear. She had not thought of it before, it flashed across her mind now that this fact was odd; but in all her morning's ruminations, she had not once thought of the mysterious stranger of the railway episode. Yet now the first words that took shape in her mind, at the entrance of this unexpected visitor, were "Clarence Vaughan, M. D." She almost spoke them.[66]

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