Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/248

244 like disloyalty on his part to doubt for a moment that she was his own grandchild. She had accepted him on faith and he knew she thought he had done the same by her.

Rebecca also had written Mrs. O'Shea. Her letter was returned with those of her grandfather. He had decided that he would not let her know about it, not yet at least. It might cause his darling some sorrow to find that the woman who had played such an active part in her life and her destiny had vanished into thin air.

Finally the detective agency reported that two days after Rebecca left New York, Mrs. O'Shea had gone as stewardess on a vessel sailing for Calcutta. She had decided quite suddenly to accept the position, and had left sketchy orders concerning mail to be forwarded. The report added that it was difficult to ascertain much concerning the former inhabitants of the studio in West Tenth Street. The property had changed hands several times in the last fifteen years and the leases to the various tenants and the names of those tenants had not been traced. It was now owned by a man who lived in the house facing the street, where Mrs. O'Shea had been employed as janitress. This owner knew little of the journalist who had recently died in the