One of the most troublesome patients at the Virginia Asylum for the Insane in Staunton was a pretty, pale little woman named Mrs. Chase.

To look at her sitting very quiet--sometimes with her fair little hands meekly folded, and a brooding sorrow in her tearful, deep blue eyes--you would have said she was a most interesting patient, and could not surely give any one trouble.

But the women attendants in her ward could have told you quite a different story.

Mrs. Chase had a suicidal mania, and had to be watched closely all the time to keep her from taking her own life.

These attendants would have explained to you that all insane people have some hobby that they ride industriously all the time.

There was the man who believed himself to be Napoleon reincarnated, and amused everybody with his military toggery and braggadocio.

There was the lady who called herself Queen Victoria, and was never seen without a huge pasteboard crown.

There were the two men who each claimed to be the Christ, and frowned disapproval on the claims of each other.

There was the youth who imagined himself a violin virtuoso, and fiddled all day long, varying his performance by pausing to pa.s.s around the hat for pennies, of which he had acc.u.mulated, it was said, more than a gallon already.

There was the forsaken bride who was waiting every day for the false lover to return and bear her away on a blissful wedding-tour.

There was the man who believed himself already dead, and solemnly recounted to you the particulars of the horrible death he had died, adding that he was detained from his grave by the delay of the cruel undertakers in taking his measure for the coffin. He had actually been known to slip into the dead-house one day, and lie down in a casket intended for a real corpse, having to have force employed to eject him from his narrow abode.

Again, there was the man who imagined himself to be a grain of corn, and fled with screams of alarm from the approach of a chicken. These, and scores of others with hobbies, tragic or ridiculous, as the case might be; but not one of them all, said the attendants, needed such care and watching as pale, pretty, meek little Mrs. Chase.

Her hobby was a lost or stolen child.

No one knew whether or not there was any truth in her claim. She had been brought there from Richmond, a friendless stranger, who had been found wandering homeless in the street, raving of a lost child.

Her story was just as likely to be false as true, they said, for lunatics imagined many things. It might be her child had died; for she was always praying for death, that she might find her lost darling again.

It was melancholy madness. The hardest to cure of all, said the doctors, and she had been frustrated in several frantic attempts to end her life.

She was so clever and so cunning that they had to watch her constantly; but even the most impatient of the attendants could not give her a cross word, her grief was so pathetic, and she seemed so sorrowfully helpless in her frail, gentle prettiness.

"Have you seen my daughter, my darling little Dainty? She is lost; stolen away from me while I slept," she would say to every strange person she saw, and her pale face would glow as she added, proudly: "She was the prettiest girl in the world. I have often heard people say so. She was as beautiful as a budding rose, with hair like the sunshine, and eyes as blue as the sky. Her little hands were white as lilies, and her feet so tiny and graceful, every one turned to watch her as she pa.s.sed; and was it any wonder she caught such a grand, rich lover? She would have married him if she had not been lost that night. Oh, let me out! let me go and find my darling! You have no right to lock me in here!"

Then she would fly into paroxysms of anger, trying to batter down the walls and escape from what she called her stony prison; and at other times she would pray for death, crying:

"Oh, G.o.d! send me death; for surely my darling must be dead, or she would have come back to me long before they locked me up here! They stole her away and killed her, my sweet Dainty, the cruel enemies who hated and envied her so much for her angelic beauty and her n.o.ble lover!

Oh, who would keep me back from death, when only through its dark gates can I find my child again?"

But they watched her carefully; they allowed her no means of ending the life of which she was so weary; and so the months flew by from September to spring, and it was almost a year since Dainty had left her home so gladly for the country visit that had ended so disastrously, and with such a veil of mystery over her strange fate.

"Where is Annette? Where is she?

Does anybody know?"

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

IT WAS THE OVERFLOWING DROP OF SORROW IN THE CUP THAT ALREADY BRIMMED OVER.

"Alone with my hopeless sorrow, No other mate I know!

I strive to awake tomorrow, But the dull words will not flow.

I pray--but my prayers are driven Aside by the angry Heaven, And weigh me down with woe!"

Young, beautiful, penniless, and alone in the world! Oh, what a cruel fate!

Dainty realized it in all its bitterness when she arrived in Richmond that dull October day, and found the first snow of the season several inches deep on the ground, making her shiver with cold in her thin summer gown and straw hat.

But her heart was warm with the thought of the dear mother she was going to rejoin.

What a glad reunion it would be for both in spite of her bitter troubles, when, clasped in that dear mother's arms, she should lay her weary head on that dear breast, and sob out all her grief to sympathizing ears.

She had a little money in a small purse that Franklin had forced her to take as a loan, and she hired a cab to take her to her old home, where she had not a doubt of still finding her mother.

Alas! what was her horror to find the small house burned to the ground!

Dismissing the cab, she started on a round of the neighborhood, seeking news of the dear one.

But there were new neighbors in the spa.r.s.ely settled place, and no one knew anything about the little lady who had kept boarders at the house on the corner.

Half frozen with the bitter cold, she dragged herself to the corner grocery, thinking that Mr. Sparks could surely give her some information.

His stolid, well-fed face was the first familiar one she had met, and she wondered why he wore that broad band of c.r.a.pe about his coat-sleeve.

"Is it really you, Miss Chase? Well, well! you're quite a stranger! Been ill? You don't look as blooming as when you went away in the summer.

Well, it was hard on you losing your little mother in that cruel fashion! But death is no respecter of persons. He robbed me of my ailing wife about the same time your mother was called. What! you don't understand? Bless me! the girl's dropped like I'd shot her! Ailsa!

Ailsa!" he called in alarm, as he picked up the unconscious girl, and hurried with her to the back of the store, which was also his dwelling.

Then a pretty, brown-eyed girl, sitting with several noisy children, sprang up, and cried in wonder:

"What is the matter?"

"Here's your old neighbor and school-mate, Ailsa, little Dainty Chase.

She came into the store, and I was talking to her about the death of my wife and her mother, when she dropped in a sort of fit. See to her, will you, while I run back to my customers?"

Pretty Ailsa Scott hastened to resuscitate her old school-mate, and when she revived, was startled to hear her sob, hysterically:

"I came to find my mother, Ailsa. I have been lost from her for wretched months; but your step-father told me she was dead! Oh, it can not be true! G.o.d would not be so cruel!"

Ailsa Scott had pa.s.sed through the recent loss of her own mother, and she knew what a blow it would be to Dainty when she heard the cruel truth; but there was no escaping it, so she clasped her gentle arms about the stricken girl, saying sadly:

"It makes my heart ache for you, dear Dainty, but it would be useless to deceive you. About the time that mother lay in her last sickness it was rumored that your mother came back here the very day after the house was burned. I did not see her myself, but it was in all the papers that she went suddenly insane, and after wandering wildly about the city all day, calling for you, took poison and died in an alley. I do not know where she is buried, for mother was so very ill, and died the same week. Since then I've had my heart and hands both full with the care of the children, and teaching school, too, for I would not depend on my step-father for a penny. You know"--whispering--"I always hated him, and there wasn't much love lost between us. Indeed, I wouldn't have stayed here a day after mother's death only for my little half-brothers and sisters. He had no relations to help him, and hired help is not very reliable. He keeps a servant, but they tell me she is unkind to the children when I'm at school. If you have no friends to go to, dear, I wish you would stay with me awhile, and look after the little ones while I'm away."

It was a delicate offer of a shelter, for Ailsa's eyes had taken in the poverty of her guest, and Dainty was but too glad of a refuge in which to nurse her deep despair.