“Nothing whatever,” he replied. “I begin to be seriously afraid that we have lost her. Do you happen to know,” he continued, looking me in the face very attentively “if the artist⁠— Mr. Hartright⁠—is in a position to give us any further information?”

“He has neither heard of her, nor seen her, since he left Cumberland,” I answered.

“Very sad,” said Sir Percival, speaking like a man who was disappointed, and yet, oddly enough, looking at the same time like a man who was relieved. “It is impossible to say what misfortunes may not have happened to the miserable creature. I am inexpressibly annoyed at the failure of all my efforts to restore her to the care and protection which she so urgently needs.”