was not his duty to track the misguided girl committed to his care, and try to bring her to reason. Mrs. Shaw failed, for the first time since her marriage, in making her husband see with her eyes, or at least in producing such paralysis of the mental optic nerve as enabled her to lead him where she saw fit.
"She's my ward, Molly," he kept repeating. "You see, that's where it is. I shouldn't be doing my duty by Anthony's child if I let her go off like this, without trying to stop her."
Alarmed guilt prompted the suggestion that Elizabeth was not quite right in her head. But then astuteness pointed out that this would be the most potent argument in determining William to follow his fugitive niece. And at length, having tried tears and supplication in vain, Mrs. Shaw saw herself compelled to allow her husband to depart, which she did with nervous apprehension and irritability. She had seldom—very seldom—in her life been left alone. And now she was absolutely alone, unable to confide in any one, even her pliant spouse failing her in this moment of peril. Truly her state of mind was not enviable.
George Daintree was alone in the outer office when his uncle's visitor appeared that afternoon. He had read Shaw's telegram, and had taken the precaution to send the junior clerk out on an errand shortly before the hour at which he knew Shaw might be expected. When the country gentleman entered, whose face George had never seen otherwise than rubicund and expressionless, and which now looked careworn and flabby, he rose, and the two men shook hands.
