Besides, his daughter--" "Ah! but I forgot," interposed Duprez again.

"The daughter, Thelma, was the child the mysteriously vanished lady carried in her arms, wandering with it all about the woods and hills.

After her disappearance, another thing extraordinary happens.

The child also disappears, and Monsieur Gueldmar lives alone, avoided carefully by every respectable person.
Suddenly the child returns, grown to be nearly a woman--and they say, lovely to an almost impossible extreme.

She lives with her father.