“I do not permit any one to question me in regard to my conduct,” Mr. Paralette said, in an offended tone, turning from the excited young man.

Perkins saw that he had gone too far, and endeavored to modify and apologize:  but the merchant repulsed him, and refused to answer any more questions, or to hold any further conversation with him on the subject.

The next step taken by the young man was to seek out his friend, and learn from him all the particular rumors on the subject, and who would be most likely to put him in the way of tracing the individuals he was in search of.  But he found, when he got fairly started on the business for which he had come to New Orleans, that he met with but little encouragement.  Some shrugged their shoulders, some smiled in his face, and nearly every one treated the matter with a degree of indifference.  Many had heard that a person claiming to be Miss Ballantine had sent notes to a few of Mr. Ballantine’s old friends about two years previous; but no one seemed to have the least doubt of her being an impostor.  A week passed in fruitless efforts to awaken any interest, or to create the slightest disposition to inquiry among Mr. B.’s old friends.  The story told by the young woman they considered as too improbable to bear upon its face the least appearance of truth.

“Why,” was the unanswerable argument of many, “has nothing been heard of the matter since?  If that girl had really been Miss Ballantine, and that simple old man her father, do you think we should have heard no more on the subject?  The imposition was immediately detected, and the whole matter quashed at once.”

Failing to create any interest in the minds of those he had supposed would have been most eager to prosecute inquiry, but led on by desperate hope, Perkins had an advertisement inserted in all the city papers, asking the individuals who had presented themselves some eighteen months before as Mr. Ballantine and his daughter, to call upon him at his rooms in the hotel.  A week passed, but no one responded to the call.  He then tried to ascertain the names of the physicians who, it was said, had attended an old man for imbecility of mind, at the request of a daughter who seemed most deeply devoted to him.  In this he at length proved successful.

“I did attend such a case,” was at last replied to his oft-repeated question.

“Then, my dear sir,” said Perkins, in a deeply excited voice, “tell me where they are.”

“That, my young friend, is, really out of my power,” returned the physician.  “It is some time since I visited them.”

“What was their name?” asked the young man.

“Glenn, if I recollect rightly.”

“Glenn!  Glenn!” said Perkins, starting, and then pausing to think.  “Was the daughter a tall, pale, slender girl, with light brown hair?”

“She was.  And though living in the greatest seclusion was a woman of refinement and education.”