“Very well, Alice,” he said quietly. “I’ll see what it means. Thank you. You may go.”
The Irish girl withdrew, marvelling as she went.
Robert looked from mother to son, puzzled at their seriousness.
“Did you know this, Madama?”
“Certainly not,” she replied stiffly.
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know what to think. Betsy grows more erratic every day. She didn’t bring my hot water this morning.”
Irving studied her face an instant more, then he left the room and ran upstairs to Betsy’s room. It was dismantled. The dresser, where a flexible case had always stood open, containing six pictures of himself from babyhood to college days, was bare, even of a cover. A trunk, locked and strapped, stood a little way out from the bare wall.
Irving sat down on it in the desolate chamber, unnerved by the shock; and although the riddle seemed a horribly easy one to solve, the solution was so repulsive that he prayed to find another explanation.