CHAPTER XXIV
HORACE CHASE, having by hard work arranged his far-stretching affairs so that he could leave them, reached L'Hommedieu late in the evening of the day of Ruth's flight. He had not telegraphed that he was coming; his plan was to have his wife well on her way to New York and the Liverpool steamer almost before she knew it. She had always been fond of the unexpected; this fondness would perhaps serve him now. When he reached the old house, to which his money had given a new freshness, there was no one to meet him but Dolly's Diana. Diana, in her moderate, unexcited way, began to tell him what had happened. But she was soon re-enforced by Félicité, whose ideas (regarding the same events) were far more theoretic.
"Miss Franklin had a lunch prepared, and took it with her," Diana went on.
"Eet ended in a peekneek," interrupted Félicité. "The leaf was so red, and the time so beautiful, monsieur; no clouds, and the sky of a blue! Then suddenlee the rain ees come. No doubt they have entered in a house to wait till morning."
"Which road did my wife take?" inquired Chase, his tone anxious.
"Ah, monsieur, no one see herr, she go so early. Eet was herr joke—to escape a leetle from herr sistare, if eet is permit to say eet; pardon."
"Which way, then, did Miss Franklin go?" continued Chase, impatiently.
Both women pointed towards the left. "She went down the street. That way."
"Down the street? That's no good. What I want to know is which road she took after leaving town?"
But naturally neither Félicité nor Miss Pollikett could answer this question; they had not followed the phaeton.