I had seen her eat her breakfast with an appetite much better than mine.  I had already offered up stairs the largest reward to anybody who would bring it back which my scanty purse would pay.  I had spoken to the clerk, who had sent for a policeman.  I could do nothing more, and I did not choose to ruin her chop and coffee by ill-timed news.  The officer came before breakfast was over, and called me from table.

On the whole, his business-like way encouraged one.  He had some clews which I had not thought possible.  It was not unlikely that they should pounce on the trunk before it was broken open.  I gave him a written description of its marks; and when he civilly asked if “my lady” would give some description of any books or other articles within, I readily promised that I would call with such a description at the police station.  Somewhat encouraged, I returned to Miss Jones, and, when I led her from the breakfast-table, told her of her misfortune.  I took all shame to myself for my own carelessness, to which I attributed the loss.  But I told her all that the officer had said to me, and that I hoped to bring her the trunk at her aunt’s before the day was over.

Fausta took my news, however, with a start which frightened me.  All her money, but a shilling or two, was in the trunk.  To place money in trunks is a weakness of the female mind which I have nowhere seen accounted for.  Worse than this, though,—­as appeared after a moment’s examination of her travelling sac,—­her portfolio in the trunk contained the letter of the aunt whom she came to visit, giving her her address in the city.  To this address she had no other clew but that her aunt was Mrs. Mary Mason, had married a few years before a merchant named Mason, whom Miss Jones had never seen, and of whose name and business this was all she knew.  They lived in a numbered street, but whether it was Fourth Street, or Fifty-fourth, or One Hundred and Twenty-fourth, or whether it was something between, the poor child had no idea.  She had put up the letter carefully, but had never thought of the importance of the address.  Besides this aunt, she knew no human being in New York.

“Child of the Public,” I said to myself, “what do you do now?” I had appealed to my great patron in sending for the officer, and on the whole I felt that my sovereign had been gracious to me, if not yet hopeful.  But now I must rub my lamp again, and ask the genie where the unknown Mason lived.  The genie of course suggested the Directory, and I ran for it to the clerk’s office.  But as we were toiling down the pages of “Masons,” and had written off thirteen or fourteen who lived in numbered streets, Fausta started, looked back at the preface and its date, flung down her pencil in the only abandonment of dismay in which I ever saw her, and cried, “First of May!  They were abroad until May.  They have been abroad since the day they were married!” So that genie had to put his glories into his pocket, and carry his Directory back to the office again.