At mid-day! Where is she? What have they done with her? And who are "they"?
Is it an idiotic joke on the part of that noisy, irrepressible Lord Fourcastles? Is it for some bet that he has spirited the little heiress away? Is it perhaps some bit of absurd skylarking got up between himself and the Honourable Jim?
If there's a chance of this it mustn't go further. I shall have to keep my mouth shut.
I can't go applying to the police—and then having Miss Million turning up and looking more than foolish! Then scolding her maid for being such a fool!
That stops my telling anybody else about my fearful anxiety—the mess I'm in!
Oh! Won't I tell Million what I think of her and her friends—all of them, Fourcastles, the cobra-woman, "London's Love," the giggling theatrical girls, and that unscrupulous nouveau-pauvre pirate, the Honourable Jim—as soon as she does condescend to reappear!...
A tap at the door. I fly to open it....
Only one of those little chocolate-liveried London sparrows, the Cecil page-boys.
He has a large parcel for Miss Million. From Madame Ellen's. (Oh, yes, of course. The blush-rose pink that had to be let out.) Carriage forward.
"Please have it paid and charge it to Miss Million's account," says Miss Million's maid, with great outward composure and an inward tremor.