After tea, Johanna, quite worn out, consented to go to bed; and then Hilary, left to her own responsibility, set herself to consider how long this dreadful quietness was to last, whether nothing could be done.  She could endure whatever was inevitable, but it was against her nature as well as her conscience to sit down tamely to endure any thing whatsoever till it did become inevitable.

In the first place, she determined on that which a certain sense of honor, as well as the fear of vexing him should he come home, had hitherto prevented the examining of Ascott’s room, drawers, clothes, and papers.  It was a very dreary business—­almost like doing the like to a person who was dead, only without the sad sanctity that belongs to the dead, whose very errors are forgotten and forgiven, who can neither suffer nor make others suffer any more.

Many things she found, and more she guessed at—­things which stabbed her to the heart, things that she never told, not even to Johanna; but she found no clew whatever to Ascott’s whereabouts, intentions, or connections.  One thing, however, struck her—­that most of his clothes, and all his somewhat extensive stock of jewelry were gone; every thing, in short, that could be convertible into money.  It was evident that his flight, sudden as it was, had been premeditated as at least a possibility.

This so far was satisfactory.  It took away the one haunting fear of his committing suicide; and made it likely that he was still lingering about, hiding from justice and Mr. Ascott, or perhaps waiting for an opportunity to escape from England—­from the fear that his godfather, even if not prosecuting him, had the power and doubtless the will completely to crush his future, wherever he was known.

Where could he go?  His Aunt tried to think over every word he had ever let fall about America, Australia, or any other place to which the hopeless outlaws of this country fly; but she could recollect nothing to enable her to form any conclusion.  One thing only she was sure of—­that if once he went away, his own words would come true; they would never see his face again.  The last tie, the last constraint that bound him to home and a steady, righteous life would be broken; he would go all adrift, be tossed hither and thither on every wave of circumstance—­what he called circumstance—­till Heaven only knew what a total wreck he might speedily become, or in what forlorn and far off seas his ruined life might go down.  He, Ascott Leaf, the last of the name and family.

“It can not be; it shall not be!” cried Hilary.  A sharp, bitter cry of resistance to the death; and her heart seemed to go out to the wretched boy and her hands to clutch at him, as if he were drowning, and she were the only one to save him.  How could she do it?

If she could only get at him, by word or letter!  But that seemed impossible, until, turning over scheme after scheme, she suddenly thought of the one which so many people had tried in similar circumstances, and which she remembered they had talked over and laughed over, they and Ascott, one Sunday evening not so very long ago.  This was—­a Times advertisement.