“Sit down,” he said, almost curtly. “Is—is Esmeralda not here?”
He asked the question with that futile hoping against hope which we are all so apt to indulge in.
Lady Wyndover stared at him.
“Esmeralda here!” she said. “No! How—how could she be here? She is at Belfayre; you left her there, did you not?”
“No!” he said in a low voice. “She is not there. I thought she might be here with you.”
He sighed at the destruction of his unreasonable hope.
“She is not here. You thought— Do you mean to say that you don’t know where she is?”
He shook his head.
“That you haven’t heard from her? But I don’t understand! Why do you not answer, Trafford? You—you frighten me!”
“Do not be frightened!” he said, though he knew the injunction was useless; she would be overwhelmed with terror, horror, presently. “She—she left Belfayre the night before last, or—or early yesterday morning.”