“Oh, Father, if he knows Miss Barbour he’s bound to be all right!” Carmencita’s arms were flung above her head and down again, and on her tiptoes she danced gaily round and round.  “We can show him where she lives.”  She stopped.  “No, we can’t.  She told me I must never do that.  I mustn’t send any one to her, but I could tell her of anybody I wanted her to know about.”  Head uplifted, her eyes searched Van Landing’s, and her words came in an awed whisper, “Was—­was she your sweetheart, Mr. Van?”

“She was.”  Again Van Landing wiped his forehead.  It didn’t in the least matter that he was telling to this unknown child the most personal of matters.  Nothing mattered but that perhaps he might find Frances.  “You must take me to her,” he said.  “I must see her to-night.”

“I can’t take you to see her to-night.  She wouldn’t like it.  Oh, I know!” Carmencita made another rapid whirl.  “We can go down-town and get”—­she nodded confidentially to her new-made friend and pointed her finger in her father’s direction—­“and then we can come back and have some toast and tea; and then I’ll send for Miss Barbour to come quick, as I need her awful, and when she comes in you can say:  ’Oh, my lost and loved one, here I am!  We will be married right away, this minute!’ I read that in a book once.  Won’t it be grand?  But you won’t—­” The dancing ceased, and her hands stiffened in sudden anxiety.  “You won’t take her away, will you?”

“If she will come with me I will not take her where she won’t come back.  Can’t we start?”

But the child was obdurate.  She would do nothing until her purchase was made, and to her entreaties her father finally yielded, and a few minutes later Van Landing and his new acquaintances were on a down-town car, bound for a shopping district as unknown to him as the shops in which he was accustomed to deal were unknown to them.

Still a bit dazed by his chance discovery, he made no comment on the child’s continual chatter, but let her exuberance and delight have full play while he tried to adjust himself to a realization that made all thought but a chaotic mixture of hope and doubt, of turbulent fear and determined purpose, and of one thing only was he sure.  Three years of his life had been wasted.  Another hour should not be lost were it in his power to prevent.

CHAPTER VI

When the store was reached Van Landing for the first time was able to see distinctly the faces of Carmencita and her father, and as for a moment he watched the slim little body in its long coat, once the property, undoubtedly, of a much bigger person, saw her eager, wonder-filled eyes, and the wistful mouth which had learned to smile at surrender, the strings of his heart twisted in protest, and for the “damanarkist” of whom she had spoken, for the moment he had sympathy of which on yesterday there would have been no understanding.  She could not be more than twelve or thirteen, he