His Other Wife: A Novel — page 268: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

260 A MIDNIGHT VISITANT. ‘‘No, sir. Mrs. Croft simply asked me to say that she comprehended all that you had written.” Croft shut his tusk-like upper teeth hard down upon his ashen lip—his mortification was profound. Mr. Fields added : ‘‘The housekeeper, Mrs, Foster, has mysteriously dis- appeared, Careful and diligent searcl®has been made after her without the smallest success. Not a trace can be found. It is supposed that her disordered brain may have suffered a fatal shock under the excitement of your arrest, which she is said to have witnessed with remarkable dem- onstrations of horror, and that she fled from the house during the night, and. must have drowned herself. The lake has been dragged to no purpose, but the river is quite near enough at hand for a maniac to have reached its swift, strong current.”’ ‘‘And Miss Draper?’ ‘‘Says she is in perfect ignorance of the present locality of the woman Rachel's residence; that the last letter an- nouncing her departure for Europe was received only: a few days after Miss Draper's arrival in your family, and that not a word indicating her future address had been given.” ‘‘Mrs. Foster must have possessed the information we require.” . ‘“Possibly; but it has disappeared with herself We must grope in the dark as best we can, waiting for the de- velopments on the other side.” im ==) Eomicbooks. co