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Updated: June 26, 2025
It stood so entirely alone that for weeks together nothing was seen or known of its inhabitants. Henry Dornham was missed from his haunts. His friends and comrades wondered for a few days, and then forgot him; they thought that in all probability he was engaged in some not very reputable pursuit. The rector of Castledene the Rev. John Darnley was the first really to miss them.
She did not wait long in that scene of confusion and sorrow. Clasping the child in her arms, lest she should see the dead face, Margaret Dornham hurried back to the cottage, bearing with her the proofs of the child's identity. The doctor was buried, and with him all trace of the child seemed lost.
On inquiry he found that the time of their departure and the place of their destination was equally unknown. No one knew whither they had gone or anything about them. Mr. Darnley was puzzled; it seemed to him very strange that, after having lived in the place so long, Margaret Dornham should have left without saying one word to any human being. "There is a mystery in it," thought the rector.
Tell me honestly, is there any, even the least probability, of finding out anything to your advantage?" "Well," replied Henry Dornham, "I am a ne'er-do-well by nature. I was an idle boy, an idle youth, and an idle man. I poached when I had a chance. I lived on my wife's earnings. I went to the bad as deliberately as any one in the world did, but I do not remember that I ever told a willful lie."
"Thank Heaven!" he said, devoutly; and then added, turning to the woman "Living and well?" "No, not well; but she will be in time. Oh, sir, forgive me! I did wrong, perhaps, but I thought I was acting for the best." "It was a strange 'best," he said, "to place a child beyond its parent's reach." "Oh, sir," cried Margaret Dornham, "I never thought of that!
As Margaret Dornham walked through the woods, she fell deeply into thought. Almost for the first time a great doubt had seized her, a doubt that made her tremble and fear. Through many long years she had clung to Madaline she had thought her love and tender care of more consequence to the child than anything else.
"Dornham!" said the puzzled nobleman. "The name is not unfamiliar to me Dornham ah, I remember!" He said no more, but the captain saw a grave expression come over his handsome face, and it occurred to him that some unpleasant thought occurred to his companion's mind. One of the first questions, after his return, that the Duke of Hazlewood put to his wife was about Lord Arleigh.
He thought to himself more than once that, if by any unexpected means he discovered that Henry Dornham was innocent of the crime attributed to him, he would in that same hour ask Madaline to forgive him, and to be the mistress of his house. That was the only real solution of the difficulty that ever occurred to him.
So it was arranged; and there were few happier women than Margaret Dornham when she heard the news. "I thought," she sobbed, in a broken voice, "that I should never be forgiven; and now I find that I am to be always near to the child for whose love I would have sacrificed the world." Lord Mountdean insisted on the fullest publicity being given to Madaline's abduction.
"A man, woman, and child could not possibly disappear from the face of the earth without leaving some trace behind," he would say. One little gleam of light came, which filled him with hope they found that Margaret Dornham had sold all her furniture to a broker living at a town called Wrentford.
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