“What was that?”

“We all left the hotel at an early hour to take the train for West Point.  Mrs. Stillwater seemed to have quite recovered from her illness.  We had arrived at the depot and received our tickets, and were waiting at the rear of a great crowd at the railway gate, till it should be opened to let us pass to our train.  I was standing on the right of my grandfather, and Rose on my right.  Suddenly a man looked around.  He was a great Wall Street broker who had dealings with your firm.  Seeing grandfather, he spoke to him heartily, and then begged to introduce the gentleman who was with him.  And then and there he presented the Dean of Olivet to Mr. Rockharrt, who, after a few words of polite greeting, presented the dean to me, and turned to find Rose Stillwater.”

“Well!  Well!”

“She was gone.  She had vanished from the crowd at the railway gate as swiftly, as suddenly, and as incomprehensibly as she had vanished from the church.  After looking about him a little, my grandfather said that she had got pressed away from us by the crowd, but that she knew her way and would take care of herself and follow us to the train all right.  But when the gates were opened we did not see her, nor did we find her on the train, though Mr. Rockharrt walked up and down through the twenty cars looking for her, and feeling sure that we should find her.  The train had started, so we had to go on without her.  My grandfather concluded that she had accidentally missed it and would follow by the next one.”

“And what did you think, Cora?”

“I thought that, for some antecedent and mysterious reason, she had fled from before the face of the Dean of Olivet at the railway station, even as she had done at the church.”

“When and where did you find her?”

“Not until our return to New York city.  My grandfather was in a fine state; kept the telegraph wires at work between West Point and New York, until he got some clew to her, and then, without waiting for the closing exercises at the military academy, he hurried me back to the city.  We found the missing woman at St. L——­’s hospital, where she had been conveyed after having been found in an unconscious condition in the ladies’ room of the railway depot.  She was better, and we brought her away to the hotel.  The Dean of Olivet went to Newport, and Mrs. Stillwater recovered her spirits.  A few days later she married Mr. Rockharrt at the church where the dean had preached.  You know everything else about the matter.  And now, Uncle Fabian, tell me that woman’s story, or at least all that is proper for me to know of it.”

“Cora, you read Rose Stillwater aright.  She did on both these occasions fly from before the face of the Dean of Olivet.  I will tell you all about her, for it is now right that you should know; but you must promise never to reveal it.”

“I promise.”

CHAPTER XXI.