“Can I see Mrs. Churchill?” asked Henderson, hoarsely.
At this moment Mrs. Churchill herself appeared at the dining-room door. She had seen Henderson arrive from the window, and now went forward to receive him.
“Good-afternoon, Mr. Henderson,” she said, with extended hand. “Come in here. I suppose you have heard what has happened?”
“About May?” gasped Henderson, who was pale and trembling in every limb.
“Yes, about May,” replied Mrs. Churchill, calmly. “May has behaved in the most extraordinary manner; she has run away from home.”
Henderson did not speak; he staggered against a chair; he grasped its back to support himself.
“Mr. Churchill and I,” continued Mrs. Churchill, still calmly, “had been away from home for a couple of days, to my place at Castle Hill, and when we returned the night before last, May had left a message with one of the boys that she had a headache, and had gone to bed. Well, yesterday morning she did not come down to breakfast, and I went upstairs to look after her. Her room was unoccupied, her bed had not been slept in; in fact, she had disappeared. Her father went at once to the station, and it appears from the station-master’s account she started for London in the afternoon of the evening of our return. The whole thing had been planned beforehand.”
“And,” faltered Henderson, for he could scarcely speak the words, the violence of his emotion was so great, “was she—alone?”
“Perfectly alone. She had engaged a strange boy to take her trunk to the station, and she had taken all her best things with her. And she left a letter for her father lying on the toilet-table of her room, in which she falsely endeavored to blame me for her conduct. She said she could not get on with me, so she had gone away. But I don’t believe a word of it; I believe I was only a blind.”