So closely love and passion blend—
Their limits we can not define—
One hardly knows they\'ve reached the end
Until they\'ve passed beyond the line.

To Mrs. Sinclair, Stella was lost indeed. Almost insane with grief, the good woman placed the matter in the competent hands of Scotland Yard, and closing her house to all visitors, gave herself up to a grief more bitter far than that which would be felt at death itself. She had at last discovered beyond dispute that her son had frequented the clubs and theatres of London for a year past, under different names and often in the company of a young girl, who, although evidently from the middle classes, was still sufficiently beautiful to attract the attention of casual observers and win the attention and preference of one so (presumably) fastidious as Maurice Sinclair.
 
This girl, she also learned, lived quietly with her grandparents on G—St., and was in all respects a most estimable young woman. Obtaining this information some two months after the disappearance of Maurice and Stella, Mrs. Sinclair went in person to the address given to ascertain, if possible, some further facts regarding her son\'s unrighteous past.

The house in G—St. looked deserted when Mrs. Sinclair\'s carriage stopped before its unpretending portals, but she was promptly admitted by a neat maid servant, to the presence of Elizabeth\'s aged grandparents. She found them mourning in pitiful grief the loss of their idolized grandchild, who they said had, according to newspaper accounts, committed suicide by jumping from the London Bridge on the very date corresponding to Maurice\'s appearance at his mother\'s home. They had identified the shawl which she had dropped from her shoulders, before taking the awful plunge into the river, and that was the only proof they had ever received, that their dear one\'s fate was the sleep that knows no waking.

Finding in Mrs. Sinclair a tearful, sympathetic[Pg 79] listener, they gladly told her of Elizabeth\'s quiet, happy life with them; of her beauty and virtue, and from this emanated the story of Lawrence Maynard, the young lodger, and their belief that it was her unrequited love for him that drove her to the fatal act.

The young man was clever and handsome, the aged woman said. He wore a close cropped auburn beard, but his hair grew long, and lay in large, loose curls upon his forehead. He seemed quiet and steady, and seldom remained away from his rooms at night, particularly, after his apparent fondness for Elizabeth had been observed by them. No one had ever called upon him except a queer Chinese peddler who, he said, brought him rare and expensive substances for his chemical experiments. Between this man and himself, there was evidently a most satisfactory understanding. They had met first in China, and Elizabeth frequently stood and listened to their comical gibberish, while the Mongolian\'s beady eyes watched her with never failing interest.

There were times even when she fancied he looked anxiously at her, and once, when Mr. Maynard[Pg 80] was absent, he tried with poor success to tell her something, but what that mysterious something was she could never ascertain.

Mr. Maynard had frequently warned them all against touching any of the test tubes, flasks, retorts and crucibles in his room, but evening after evening he called Elizabeth to watch the changing colors in the delicate fluids, or the crystillization of rare substances while he instructed her, so they honestly supposed, by many scientific and wonderful experiments.

This was all Mrs. Sinclair could learn from the aged mourners, and weary at heart she returned once more to her now cheerless home. She felt certain that this Lawrence Maynard and her son were one and the same person, but little did she dream of the actual facts that remained untold in the aged woman\'s innocent recital.

It was in this cleverly improvised laboratory that Elizabeth Merril, unknown to her feeble grandparents, passed the few deliriously happy hours of her otherwise unromantic life. She had entered in the full possession of her womanly dignity and virtue, only to become faint from the exhalations[Pg 81] of tempting perfumes............