The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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СКАЧАТЬ the house swung to. Laura had evidently sent her little girl out of doors, into the garden. What could she be coming to say?

      Quickly Katty examined her conscience. No, there was nothing that Laura could possibly have found out. As to that half day spent with Godfrey in York, Laura was surely the last woman to mind—and if she did mind, she was quite the last woman to say anything about it!

      There came a knock at the door: then Harber's voice, "Mrs. Pavely wants to know, ma'am, if she can come up and speak to you, just for a minute."

      "Ask Mrs. Pavely to come up," said Katty, pleasantly.

      A minute later, Laura walked forward into the room. It was the first time she had been in Katty's bedroom since Rosedean had been first furnished.

      She looked round her with a smile. "Why, Katty," she exclaimed, "how charming and pretty you've made it all! You've added quite a number of things since I was here last."

      "Only the curtains," said Katty quickly (oh, how relieved she felt!), "only the curtains, and perhaps that arm-chair, Laura."

      "Yes, I suppose that is all, but somehow it looks more."

      Laura looked exactly as she always looked, rather paler perhaps than usual, but then Laura was pale. She had that peculiar clear, warm whiteness of skin that is compared by its admirers to a camellia; this morning, her lovely, deep blue eyes looked tired, as if she had been sleeping badly.

      "I've really come to ask if you know where Godfrey is? We expected him home on Thursday. Then he sent a telephone message saying that he couldn't be back till yesterday. No time was mentioned, but as he had a lot of appointments at the Bank we of course thought he would be back early. I myself sat up for him last night till after the last train, but now, this morning, I've heard nothing from him—and Mr. Privet has heard nothing."

      "What an odd thing!" exclaimed Katty. She really did think it very odd, for Godfrey was the most precise of men.

      She waited a moment, then said truthfully, "No, I haven't the slightest idea where he is. He wrote me a line late last week about a little investment of mine. I've got the letter somewhere."

      Katty was trying to make up her mind as to whether she should say anything concerning that joint journey to York. At last she decided not to do so. It had nothing to do with Godfrey's absence now.

      "Doesn't Mr. Privet know where he is?" she asked. "That really is very odd, Laura."

      "Of course Mr. Privet knows where Godfrey was up to Thursday morning. He stayed where he always does stay when in London, at the Hungerford Hotel, in Trafalgar Square. He's always stayed there—they know him, and make him very comfortable. But Mr. Privet telephoned through there yesterday—as a matter of fact I've only just heard this—and they told him that Godfrey had left the hotel on Thursday morning. But the extraordinary thing is," and now Laura really did look somewhat troubled—"that they were expecting him back there to pack, to leave for here—at least so the manager understood him to say. He went out in the morning, and then he didn't come back, as they thought he would do, to luncheon. All his things are still at the Hungerford Hotel."

      Katty began to feel a little uneasy. "Perhaps he's had an accident," she said. "After all, accidents do happen. Have you done anything, Laura?"

      Laura shook her head. "What seems to make the theory of an accident unlikely is that telephone message. You see, he telephoned quite late on Thursday saying that he would stay in town over the night. But he didn't send a similar message to the Bank, as any one knowing Godfrey would certainly have expected him to do, and he didn't let them know at the Hungerford Hotel that he would be away for the night. It's all rather mysterious."

      "Yes, it is," said Katty.

      "I wonder—" Laura grew a little pink—"I wonder," she said again, "if you know on what business Godfrey went up to town? Mr. Privet would rather like to know that."

      And then Katty grew a little pink, too. She hesitated. "No, I don't know what business took him away. You forget that I myself have been away for quite a long time—I only came back on Thursday afternoon."

      "Why, of course!" exclaimed Laura. "I forgot that. You've been away nearly a fortnight, haven't you?"

      "Yes. First I went right down to the south, and then up to Yorkshire."

      Somehow she felt impelled to say this.

      But Katty's visits were of no interest to Laura at any time, least of all just now. "Well, I thought I'd come and just ask you on the chance," she said.

      She got up, and for a moment or two the two young women stood together not far from the bow window of Katty's bedroom.

      Suddenly Katty exclaimed, "Why, there's Oliver Tropenell! What an extraordinary thing! I thought he was abroad."

      "He came back yesterday morning," said Laura quietly.

      Katty gave her visitor a quick, searching look. But there was never anything to see in Laura's face.

      "Hadn't I better call out to him? He's evidently on his way to The Chase. Hadn't I better say you're here?"

      And, as Laura seemed to hesitate, she threw open the window. "Mr. Tropenell?" she called out, in her clear, ringing voice.

      The man who was striding past Rosedean, walking very quickly, stopped rather unwillingly. Then he looked up, and when he saw who it was that was standing by Mrs. Winslow, he turned in through the gate, and rang the door-bell.

      "Will you go down to him, Laura? I can't come as I am."

      "I'll wait while you put on your dress. We can tell him to go out into the garden with Alice."

      She bent over the broad, low bar of the window, and Oliver, gazing up at her, thought of Rossetti's lines: Heaven to him was where Laura was.

      "Will you go through the house into the garden? Alice is there. We'll be down soon."

      Katty lingered a little, though she only had to put on her blouse, her skirt, and a sports coat. "I feel quite anxious about Godfrey," she said hesitatingly.

      And Laura, in an absent voice, said, "Yes, so do I. But of course by this time he may be at the Bank. He's quite fond of that very early morning train. He often took it last summer."

      "Yes, but now he would have had to get up in the dark to take it."

      "I don't think Godfrey would mind that."

      At last the two went downstairs, and out into the garden where Oliver Tropenell and the child were talking together.

      Oliver turned round, and after shaking hands with Mrs. Winslow, he asked Laura an abrupt question. "Did Godfrey come back last evening after all?"

      Katty looked at him inquisitively. Then he had been at The Chase yesterday?

      Laura shook her head. "No, I sat up for him till midnight. I thought it almost certain that he'd taken the last train. But we've had no news of him at all. Perhaps he's at the Bank by now—I'll ring up as soon as I get home. Come, Alice, my dear."

      Katty heard Oliver Tropenell say in a low voice: "May I walk with you?"

      And СКАЧАТЬ