'You mustn't read the names on them, because that wouldn't be fair. You may only look at the pictures. Oh, won't you have tea? Do have tea.'
'I think I'll wait for your mother.'
'Oh, no; have tea now, quick. Then I can take some of your sugar.'
Hyacinth agreed; but scarcely had this point been settled when Edith returned and sent him off.
'Edith,' Hyacinth said, 'do you know I am rather worried about two things? I won't tell you the worst just yet.'
'It's sure to be all your fancy,' said Edith affectionately.
'Well, it isn't my fancy about Anne. Is it not the most extraordinary thing? Since the day of my wedding she's never been seen or heard of. She walked straight out into the street, and London seems to have swallowed her up. She took nothing with her but a large paper parcel, and left all her luggage, and even her dress that I made her get for the wedding was laid out on the bed. What can have become of her? Of course, I know she has plenty of money, and she could easily have bought an entirely new outfit, and gone away—to America or somewhere, under another name without telling anyone. We've inquired of her father, and he knows nothing about her. It really is a mysterious disappearance.'
'I don't feel as if anything had happened to her,' Edith said, after a pause. 'She's odd, and I fancy she hated your marrying, and didn't want to see you again. She'll get over it and come back. Surely if there had been an accident, we should have heard by now. Do you miss her, Hyacinth?'
'Of course I do, in a way. But everything's so different now. It isn't so much my missing her, if I only knew she was all right. There's something so sad about disappearing like that.'
'Well, everything has been done that can be done. It's not the slightest use worrying. I should try and forget about it, if I were you. What's the other trouble?'