She had risen. She was getting ready to go upon her fell mission; and the calm contempt slid away from Anthony and cold terror crawled up his spinal column. Just when he had fondly imagined that all was well, Beatrice had come and proved that all was anything else in the world!
Just when he had fancied that Mary was safe at home and, with her doubtless capable maid, was devising a convincing tale to account for her absence, Beatrice must needs appear and show that, tale or no tale, Mary was to be accused.
And there wasn't a flaw in her program, by the way. She held the hat as a man might cling to a straw in mid-ocean; and the lady who could show a similar hat would clear herself and then start her male relatives after Anthony; and the lady who could not show a similar hat—was Mary!
Obviously the fine resolve he had made was to avail little enough, but Anthony could think of no way of staying the lady. Physical force leaped up as a possibility in his tortured mind and leaped out again as quickly.
One suggestion of that sort of thing and instinct told him that Beatrice, in her present unlovely mood, would scream until the rafters echoed, if they happened to have rafters in the Hotel Lasande. Moral suasion, honeyed talk were still farther from the possibilities. No, Beatrice would have to go!
She was ready now. Habit superseding circumstances, Beatrice had stepped to the mirror and tucked up a few stray locks of hair. The little hat was under her arm, and the arm had shut down tight on it.
"You two curs!" Beatrice said, by way of farewell, and turned away from them with a sweep.
It was no apartment in which to do what one expected to do. Beatrice, one step taken, stopped short. Out at the door some one was hammering in a way oddly familiar. Anthony, rising again, hurried to answer the summons—and the door was hardly open when young Robert Vining hurtled in and gripped him by both arms.
"It's no use, Anthony!" he gasped. "There's not a trace of her yet!"
"No?"