An Ambitious Man

The rector instituted a quiet search, but only succeeded in learning

that she had conducted her preparations for departure with the

greatest secrecy, and that to no one had she imparted her plans.

Whenever a young woman shrouds her actions in the garments of

secrecy, she invites suspicion. The people who love to suspect their

fellow-beings of wrong-doing were not absent on this occasion.

The rector was hurt and wounded by all this, and while he resented

the intimation from another that Miss Irving's conduct had been

peculiar and mysterious, he felt it to be so in his own heart.

"Is it her mother's tendency to adventure developing in her?" he

asked himself.

Yet he wrote her a letter, directing it to her at the old number,

thinking she would at least leave her address with the post-office

for the forwarding of mail. The letter was returned to him from that

cemetery of many a dear hope, the dead-letter office. A personal in

a leading paper failed to elicit a reply. And then one day six

months after the disappearance of Joy Irving, the young rector was

called to the Cheney household to offer spiritual consolation to Miss

Alice, who believed herself to be dying. She had been in a decline

ever since the rector went away for his health.

Since his return she had seen him but seldom, rarely save in the

pulpit, and for the last six weeks she had been too ill to attend

divine service.

It was Preston Cheney himself, at home upon one of his periodical

visits, who sent for the rector, and gravely met him at the door when

he arrived, and escorted him into his study.

"I am very anxious about my daughter," he said. "She has been a

nervous child always, and over-sensitive. I returned yesterday after

an absence of some three months in California, to find Alice in bed,

wasted to a shadow, and constantly weeping. I cannot win her

confidence--she has never confided to me. Perhaps it is my fault;

perhaps I have not been at home enough to make her realise that the

relationship of father and daughter is a sacred one. This morning

when I was urging her to tell me what grieved her, she remarked that

there was but one person to whom she could communicate this sorrow--

her rector. So, my dear Dr Stuart, I have sent for you. I will

conduct you to my child, and I leave her in your hands. Whatever

comfort and consolation you can offer, I know will be given. I hope

she will not bind you to secrecy; I hope you may be able to tell me

what troubles her, and advise me how to help her."