"And what did she say?"
"She laughed at me. She said her daughter was a strong girl, who wouldn't let herself be abducted without a struggle, and that a single scream would have alarmed the house."
"But suppose she'd been drugged," suggested Godfrey. "Then she would have neither screamed nor struggled."
"Last night," I said, "I was half-inclined to believe that something of the sort had happened. I'd forgotten one fact which absolutely disproves it. She left a note behind her—or, at least, wrote it and sent it back after she ran away."
"Ah—she did?"
"Yes—a note saying the marriage was impossible, though her love was unaltered, and that Curtiss wasn't to attempt to find her."
Godfrey sat suddenly upright with grim countenance.
"Then there's only one explanation of it," he said. "There's only one thing could make a girl drop everything and run away like that—only one thing in the world. She's already married, and her first husband's turned up."
"I'd thought of that, too; but her mother swears her daughter never had a love affair previous to this one."
"Of course she'd say so. Has any other possible explanation occurred to you?"