“What do you think? Call and offer my congratulations, of course.”
“Don’t be a madman. You know nothing for certain. Wait and see if she doesn’t turn up at the office as usual to-morrow.”
He seemed to think a moment, and then he threw up his hands with a loud, wailing moan.
“Lost!” he cried. “In my heart I know it.”
Did I not in mine? It had rung in my ears all night. I took a step toward him, greatly moved by his despairing, broken tone, but he waved me back fiercely.
“I curse the day,” he cried in bitter grief, “that ever I came across you. I would have let you rob me—that was nothing to her happiness; but now——”
“Let him look to himself,” he went on after a pause, in which he had mastered his emotion. “After to-morrow—I will wait till then—but afterward—the world isn’t wide enough to keep us apart. Better for him to run from an uncubbed tigress than this twisted cripple!”
He tossed one arm aloft with a wild, savage gesture and strode heavily from the room.
CHAPTER XXV.
A LAST MESSAGE.
Dolly never came to work the next morning, but there arrived a little letter from her to Mr. Ripley, giving notice, that was all, with no address or clew to her whereabouts, and an intimation that it was understood she sacrificed her position—pitiful heaven, for what?