A seventeen-year-old girl named Amy Warden vanishes without trace on a summer morning while walking from her father's estate near Dunwich. She exchanges greetings with neighbours, enters the high road, and is never seen again. Her wealthy and well-connected father, Stephen Warden, offers a substantial reward while the community is gripped by bewilderment. Two young men who both loved Amy — the spirited Frank Varley and the refined, intellectual Lord Hardcastle — form an unlikely alliance to find her, vowing to search the world if necessary. A London detective, Hill, examines the household and becomes suspicious of Amy's personal maid, Lucy Williams, whose brother Tom is a convicted criminal. Before she can be properly questioned, Lucy flees the house on the same night Amy's parents fall ill with smallpox. Varley pursues Lucy to London, where she is dying of suppressed smallpox at the home of a devout woman named Miss Kempe. Lucy reveals nothing coherent before dying, though her delirious utterances implicate her brother Tom. Amy's jewellery, including her butterfly brooch and earrings, is recovered. Detective Hill theorises that Lucy stole the jewellery opportunistically and fabricated Amy's description to include the ruby ring, which she had given to Tom to fund his escape. Varley travels to Liverpool to lay a trap for Tom, while Hardcastle remains at the High Elms as nurse and companion to the stricken Wardens. During this vigil, Hardcastle notices that Amy bore no resemblance to either parent, and that Mrs Warden's grief for Amy seemed secondary to her grief for her husband's suffering. On a stormy night, Amy's deerhound Presto becomes agitated, and Amy's body is discovered face down in the swollen stream, dressed in her blue silk walking costume and bearing a plain gold wedding ring on her finger. Mrs Warden dies the same night. Amy is buried under a marble cross inscribed only with the word "Aimée," while her mother receives a full inscription. The difference scandalises the neighbourhood. Varley, devastated by news of Amy's death, falls gravely ill in Dublin. His mother and childhood friend Mary Burton nurse him back to health, and his mother manoeuvres him into an engagement with Mary. He marries her within weeks of Amy's death, to his father's indignation. Meanwhile Hardcastle, puzzled by the inscription on Amy's grave and by Amy's lack of resemblance to her parents, persuades the grieving Mr Warden to confide in him. Warden reveals that Amy's true mother was a beautiful, passionate Cevenol woman, also named Aimée, whom he had married in France in his youth. Her tempestuous nature and the influence of her devoted nurse Isola had caused a rupture, and she eventually left him for a cousin. Isola later brought him false news of Aimée's death, a lie Aimée herself had arranged so that Warden might find peace with a second wife. He had remarried and moved to England, raising Amy without telling her the truth. Hardcastle persuades Warden to travel with him to the Auvergne region of France, following a hunch that the truth lies there. During the journey, a mysterious grey-cloaked figure follows them from London to Boulogne. While Hardcastle dozes by a fire at the hotel, this figure enters and places Amy's missing ruby ring on his finger, whispering that he should take it and let the sinner go. All enquiries about the woman prove fruitless. They continue to Le Puy, where Warden grows rapidly weaker. Hardcastle rides into the mountains to find Isola and question her. On a volcanic crag in the dying light, he discovers not Isola alone but Amy herself, alive. It emerges that Amy had received a letter from Isola revealing that her mother was alive and dying in a convent nearby. Believing her father had lied to her and wronged her mother, Amy fled impulsively to France and found her mother at the Convent of Saint Geneviève. She spent weeks there, unable to reconcile the competing loyalties pressing on her. Her mother, increasingly distraught and longing to see Warden again, prevailed on Amy to let her escape the convent in Amy's dress while Amy remained behind in a nun's habit. The first Aimée travelled to England, watched Hardcastle and Warden's movements, placed the ring on Hardcastle's finger in Boulogne, then went down to Harleyford on the night of the storm and drowned herself in the stream — it having been her deliberate sacrifice to remove herself from her husband's life without scandal. The body found was hers, not Amy's. Amy, stranded at the convent waiting for word, came close to losing her mind from anxiety and suspense until Hardcastle found her. Isola, having lost both the women she devoted her life to, wastes away and dies alone in her mountain hut shortly before the Wardens and Hardcastle depart for England. Detective Hill's subsequent letter explains how Tom Williams's flight and Miss Kempe's sentimental devotion led to the ring being restored, and how Lucy had stolen the jewellery purely for her brother's benefit. In England the following spring, with the truth known and Amy's innocence established, Hardcastle asks for Amy's hand, and they marry on a bright May morning in Harleyford church.
By Catherine Louisa Pirkis · First published 1894 · Genre: Mystery, Detective Fiction, Crime Fiction · 15 chapters