"I journey whither I cannot see. 'Tis strange that I can merry be."
The old motto of Wharton Hall, in Surrey, England, was perfectly familiar to him, because he had visited the place with his father, on one of their journeys abroad, and having noted down the lines, which still remained engraven on the wall, he had committed them to memory. And here was the last half of that quatrain, obscurely inscribed--as if the embroiderer had hardly understood their full significance--on the handiwork of Adela Reefe. Could there be anything more astounding than this? Did Adela know the origin of those verses? And if she did, what momentous secret did the fact involve?
The next moment, naturally enough, a simple and matter-of-fact solution occurred to him. Adela might have learned the motto from the Floyds.
"Do you see how it reads?" he asked, holding up the bead-work so that Jessie could survey the whole pattern.
He pointed out the letters with his finger, and gradually spelled the inscription through, until she caught its purport.
"How very odd!" she exclaimed, at the end. But the look with which she accompanied the remark showed that the verses touched no chord of memory or knowledge in her mind. "Where do you suppose the girl got the idea?" she concluded.
The quivering sensation which Lance had felt, at first, renewed itself. He laid the belt down, and, as he did so, his hands trembled.
"Do _you_ know anything about this motto?" he said, appealing to the colonel.
But the colonel was also a blank on the subject.
Lance, therefore, was reduced to telling them where he had seen it. In doing this he was quite methodical, but he could not conceal the peculiar agitation which affected him.
Both the colonel and his daughter were much impressed by his strange disclosure, and were utterly at a loss to account for the reappearance of the traditional rhymes in a way so unlooked for; but they did not take the mystery so much to heart as Lance did.
"It's not only extraordinary, but incredible," he affirmed. "I must see that girl and ask her about it."
Jessie was not much inclined to give heed to her lover's curiosity about Adela, and his desire to consult her respecting the enigma which had so piqued him. But he continued so persistent, that she was obliged to humor him; and before a week passed he persuaded her to ride with him to Hunting Quarters and search out the mysterious maiden.