Lucius Davoren, Volume I by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

It is one thing for a man to make a rash promise, but another thing for him to keep it. A man in love will pledge himself to any enterprise-to any adventure-even to the discovery of a new planet or a new continent, should his mistress demand as much. After contemplating the question from every possible point of view, Lucius Davoren was disposed to think that he had pledged himself to the performance of something that was more impossible than astronomical or geographical discovery, when he promised to find Lucille Sivewright's father, or, failing that, obtain for her at least the story of his fate.

It had seemed a great point to get the old man to speak freely of his lost son; but even with this new light thrown upon the business, an Egyptian darkness still surrounded the figure of the missing man. He had sailed for a certain port. He might be still a denizen of that Southern city. Yet what less likely in such a man's career than continued residence anywhere? The criminal is naturally a wanderer. He has no fixed abiding-place. Fresh woods and pastures new are the necessity of his contraband existence. Like a smuggled keg of cognac, he passes from place to place under a cloud of mystery. None see him arrive or depart. Like the chameleon, he changes colour-now wearing dyed whiskers and a wig, now returning to the hues of nature. He has as many names as the Roman Jupiter.