The Senator's Favorite

Precious did not care about the old gentleman. She moved back, and looked another way to escape an introduction.

"Ah, Baron Nugent," cried the lady and for ten minutes he lingered beside her, then moved on.

"Precious," she cried, looking around, but there was no answer. Precious had disappeared.

"She is hiding, to tease me," smiled Mrs. Winans, and began to search for her daughter with a smile on her lips.

But Precious was nowhere to be seen, and she presently grew quite alarmed.

"She will be lost in this dense crowd. It was very thoughtless in her to leave my side. I must find her father and send him to search for her," cried the frightened mother.

But for some time she could not see her husband, or any one else that she knew.

Suddenly she came upon Ethel and Lord Chester sitting close to a vine-wreathed pillar, seemingly absorbed in each other. The handsome young nobleman was leaning over Ethel with an air of devotion that seemed only the due of her dark and sparkling beauty.

Mrs. Winans gave a little suppressed sob of joy at finding some one that she knew. She went up to the lovers, and cried tremulously:

"Oh, Ethel, have you seen Precious? She is lost!"

Ethel looked up with a frown at the interruption of her charming conversation, and answered coldly:

"No, mamma; I thought she was with you."

"She was, but a little while ago Baron Nugent stopped to speak to me, and when I looked around again Precious had disappeared as completely as if she had sunk through the floor. She must have strayed into the crowd, the thoughtless child, and got lost. Oh, if I could find her father and send him to look for her!"

"I will be very glad to bring him to you, madam," exclaimed Lord Chester, courteously and he hurried away to seek the senator.

Ethel pouted angrily.

"If you had only stayed where you were, mamma, Precious would have come back to you directly. You are making a great fuss over nothing," she declared, and Mrs. Winans trembled at the jealous flash in the large dark eyes.

"My dear, I am very sorry I interrupted you," she said, in her low, gentle voice. "But I was so alarmed over Precious I did not think. Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive, but it is just like Precious, raising an excitement, and spoiling every one's pleasure. She should never have come," Ethel replied ungraciously.

At that moment Lord Chester came hurrying back with Senator Winans in tow.

"Oh, Paul, I have lost Precious," his wife cried with a choking sob.

"No, dear, we will find her presently, I'm sure," he said cheerfully, but with an anxious light in his eyes. Then he explained that while she was talking to the baron he had beckoned Precious away in order to present her to a friend of his, a cabinet minister. While they were all talking they had spied the president leaving, and bidding Precious remain where she was until he came back her father hurried forward for a few good-night words with him.

"I am sure I was not absent more than fifteen minutes from her side, but when I returned she was gone. I supposed she had made her way back to you, and was searching for you both when I met Lord Chester."

"She never came back. Oh, my darling, where are you? What has become of you?" moaned the anxious mother, and her lovely, delicate face paled with fear.

"Do not be alarmed, Grace. I will soon find her for you," her husband cried, and Lord Chester, eager to be of use, added:

"I will assist you if you will describe your daughter to me."

Senator Winans cried impulsively:

"She is the most beautiful girl you ever saw. Only sixteen, with blue eyes like velvet pansies, golden curls sweeping to her waist, a white silk gown, and pearls on her lovely white neck."

A low, muttered word came from Ethel's lips, but they did not catch its import, and turned away. Only her tearful mother saw the livid pallor that overspread the beautiful face and the flash of anger in the dark eyes.

CHAPTER III.

"THEY HAVE CHEATED ME OF THE LOVE THAT SHOULD BE MINE."

"How does a woman love? Once, no more,
Though life forever its loss deplore;
Deep in sorrow, or want, or sin,
One king reigneth her heart within;
One alone by night and day
Moves her spirit to curse or pray."

    —Rose Terry Cooke.

An hour's frantic search convinced Senator Winans that his daughter was not in the immense ballroom, and inquiry among the door-keepers brought to light something very startling.

A young man had left the ballroom an hour before, carrying an unconscious girl in his arms.

He had told the doorkeeper that she was his sister, that she had fainted in the crowd, and that he was going to put her in his carriage, and take her home.

When the man described the beauty of the unconscious girl, the soft white silk gown, and the long golden curls, the agonized senator could no longer doubt that his darling had been kidnaped by some villain, and carried off to some terrible unknown fate.

It was terrible to think that such a thing could be in that gala scene among those thousands of joyous people, and in that blaze of light and splendor. It was like a sword in her father's heart.

His face grew ashen, his eyes blazed, and he swore the most terrible revenge on the fiend who had stolen Precious.

"Oh, my darling, my darling, this news will break her mother's heart!" he groaned.

"But she has another daughter left to comfort her," ventured the elegant young Englishman.

"Yes, we have Ethel. She is a good daughter, but Precious was our favorite, our darling."

"But why? Miss Winans is very charming," cried Lord Chester, a little jealous for the beautiful girl he admired so much.

"Yes, Ethel is charming, but so was my little Precious. She was charming and winsome, too, my youngest born, my darling, the idol of my heart!" groaned the senator, completely overcome by his trouble.

Lord Chester began to feel an eager curiosity over the missing girl. Was she, indeed, as lovely and winsome as her father declared? She must be if her charms exceeded Ethel's.

He held out a sympathetic hand to the stricken father.

"General, pray command my services in this sad affair to assist you in all possible ways," he exclaimed cordially.

"Thank you, Lord Chester, for we must begin to follow up the clews at once. But my heart bleeds for my wife. I fear this shock will almost kill her. My lord, if you will order my carriage, I will send her home with Ethel, telling her that perhaps Precious has somehow found her way home. Not a word of the truth yet. It must be broken to her later, and very gently. She must think that I am still searching here, while in fact I shall be on the track of the kidnaper. Oh, Heavens every moment is an agony, until I find my child again!"

And later on, when his wife and daughter were gone, and he was rolling in a cab to the office of a great detective, he confided to the young Englishman a brief page from his romantic earlier life.