The Blue Diamond by Annie Haynes

outside.”
    â€œIt is absolutely unaccountable—I never heard anything like it!” Hilda said breathlessly. “Then she really disappeared when she left my room that night?”
    â€œYes—up till now,” Sir Arthur said unwillingly. He was beginning to fear the result of the girl’s excessive agitation. “I think we may hear from her any day. To me it seems evident that she went away of her own free will. I feel sure no harm has happened to her.”
    Hilda made no reply, but lay gazing apparently at the fire, her large blue eyes looking bigger than ever by contrast with the unnatural pallor of her face.
    Arthur turned to his Elaine again; there was much that could be done without actually posing Hilda, and he went on with it, casting a glance at the girl’s averted profile every now and then. Presently he saw that great tears were rolling slowly down her face and that she was trembling from head to foot. He threw down his brushes impetuously and crossed over to her.
    â€œWill you not tell me what is troubling you? It may be that in some way I could help you.”
    Hilda shook her head as she pulled out her handkerchief.
    â€œYou are very kind—you are all of you kindness itself to me; but it seems that no one can help me—no one can clear up the mystery overhanging my life. You can have no idea what it feels like to be a mere waif—without a home, without friends or a name even. Ah, when shall I remember?” She covered her face with her hands.
    Arthur ventured to touch them softly; the sight of the girl’s distress almost unmanned him.
    â€œDo not,” he besought her eagerly, “please do not! How can you say you have no friends when you are with us—that you are alone in the world when you know that it is the greatest joy to have you here?”
    â€œAh, no! I was ungrateful!” Hilda said with a pathetic little attempt at a smile as she dried her eyes. “I ought to have remembered what you have all done for me. You must forgive me; but this disappearance of the nurse is so strange that it seems all a part of the misfortune that pursues me. Do you believe in fate, Sir Arthur?”
    â€œI can’t say I do,” Sir Arthur said in some embarrassment. He had all the ordinary young Englishman’s distaste for metaphysics, and, greatly as he sympathized with Hilda, he would have infinitely preferred to keep the conversation on less abstract lines.
    â€œI do most thoroughly. I believe in a fate—a power that may neither be evaded nor defied,” Hilda went on to his complete discomfort; “and I feel sure that this—this woman’s disappearance is all part of the mystery that overhangs me.”
    â€œCome, come, Miss Hilda, now you are getting quite out of my depth!” Arthur expostulated, taking a low chair and drawing it up near the couch. “How could the two things be connected in any way? Besides, I don’t suppose there is much mystery about either of them really. Nurse Marston may turn up sooner or later, and when you are a little stronger you will remember who you are and this time next year we shall be laughing to think how puzzled we were.”
    Hilda’s eyes were full of trouble, the colour had not come back to her cheeks, her lips drooped pathetically.
    â€œI have tried—oh, how I have tried!—to remember where I came from, and it is all no use.”
    â€œIsn’t that just what the doctors said you were not to do?”
    â€œI can’t help it. How can I?” Hilda broke out passionately. “Sometimes I fancy I am on the verge of recalling everything, and then it all goes away again. When I think of that night—the time I came here—try as I will it only seems like a sort of maze—a bad dream. I imagine that some one was unkind to me—I fancy I can remember angry words, and then it was dark and wet everywhere, and I was cold, so cold. Then through the