"Have you found the runabout?"
"Yes, the police found it in an alley near South Water Street, badly smashed. Beekman's overcoat and cap were in the car."
"Do you think he has been hurt?" questioned Stephanie, who had listened breathlessly to the conversation between her lover and her maid-of-honor.
"I'm sure that he can't have been," returned Harnash with definiteness which carried conviction to his questioner, and no one else caught the meaning look he shot at her.
"And that's all?" asked Josephine.
"Absolutely all I can tell you," he replied truthfully, none noticing the equivoke but Stephanie, who of course could not call attention to it.
"You poor girl," said Josephine, gathering Stephanie in her arms.
"It's outrageous. It's horrible," cried the girl, biting her lip to keep back her tears.
She really could scarcely tell whether she was glad or sorry, now that it had come; not that her feelings had changed, but there was the public scandal, the affront, the--but she had not time to speculate.
"What is outrageous, what is horrible?" asked John Maynard, coming into the room and catching her words. "What can be outrageous or horrible in such a wedding as we have arranged? Why, Stephanie, what's the matter? You're as white as a sheet, and Harnash, are you ill? You're a pretty looking spectacle for a best man."