of this i must tell her the truth or she may in her ignorance commit herself to some course or other that may be she said just now that if he could see her and know how occupied with him and him alone is her every waking hour she is sure he would forgive her the wicked of becoming his wife very sweet all that and touching i not conceal my tears april � the house is in confusion my father is angry and distressed and i am distracted has disappeared � gone away secretly i cannot help thinking that i where she is gone to how guilty i seem and how innocent she o that i had told her before now i o clock � no trace of her as yet we find also that the little waiting maid we have here in training has disappeared with and there is not much doubt that fearing to travel alone has induced this girl to go with her as companion i am almost sure she has started in desperation to find him and that is her goal why should she run away if not to join her husband as she thinks him s now that i consider there have been indications of this wish in her for days as in birds of passage there signs of their intention and yet i did not she would have taken such an extreme step and without consulting me i can only down the bare facts � i have no time for reflections but fancy travelling across the continent of europe with a of a girl who will be more of a charge than an assistance they will be a mark for every who them evening o clock � yes it is as i she has gone to join him a note posted by her in at daybreak has reached me this afternoon � to the fortunate chance of one of the servants calling for letters in town to day or i should not have got it to morrow she merely her determination of going to him and has started privately that nothing may hinder her stating nothing about her route that such a gentle thing suddenly become so calmly resolute quite surprises me alas he may have left she may not find him for weeks � may not at all my father on learning the facts bade me at once have everything ready by nine this evening in time to drive to the train that meets the night steam boat this i have done and there being an hour to spare before we start i relieve the suspense of waiting by taking up my pen he says overtake her we must and calls charles the hardest of names he believes of course that she is merely an girl rushing off to meet her lover and how can the wretched i tell him that she is more and in a sense better than that � yet not sufficiently more and better to make this flight to charles anything but a still greater danger to her than a mere lover s impulse we shall go by way of paris and we think we may overtake her there i hear my father walking up and down the hall and can write no more s viii � she travels in pursuit april evening paris j � there is no her at this place but she has been here as i thought no other hotel in paris being known to her we go on to morrow morning april � a morning of adventures and emotions which leave me sick and weary and yet unable to sleep though i have lain down on the sofa of my room for more than an hour in the attempt i therefore make up my to date in a hurried fashion for the sake of the it affords to ideas which otherwise remain suspended hotly in the brain we arrived here this morning in broad sunlight which lit up the sea buildings as we approached so that they seemed like a city of cork floating like on the smooth blue deep but i only glanced from the carriage window at the lovely scene and we were soon across the intervening water and inside the railway station when we got to the front steps the row of black and the shouts of the so bewildered my father that he was understood to require two instead of one with two oars and so i found him in one and myself in another we got this after a while and were rowed at once to the hotel on the where m de la had been staying when we last heard from him the way being down the grand canal for some distance under the and then by narrow which eventually brought us under the bridge of sighs � harmonious to our moods � and out again into open water the scene was purity itself as to colour but it was cruel that i should behold it for the first time under such circumstances as soon as we entered the hotel which is an place like most places here where people are taken en as well as the ordinary way i rushed to the framed list of visitors hanging in the s hall and in a moment i saw charles s name upon it among the rest but she was our chief thought i turned to the hall porter and � knowing that she would have travelled as madame de la � i asked for her under that name without my father hearing he poor soul was making outside the door about an english lady as if there were not a score of english ladies at hand she has just come said the porter madame came by the very early train this morning when was asleep and she requested us not to disturb him she is now in 