He handed the letter to his daughter, and paced the room, dumb for the time with anger and surprise.
“Where can she have gone?” said Minnie. “And how on earth can we hush it up here?”
“Easily enough,” said her father with contempt in his tone, “say that she has joined some friends in Montreux, and we can all leave to-morrow. Indeed I shall go straight home to-day and track her out. Little minx! Who would have thought her capable of such resistance! A little blue-eyed slip of a girl, who had hardly a word to say for herself!”
He turned away in search of Bruce Wylie, and was glad to see that his friend was shocked and perplexed by the news. To do the lawyer justice he was really anxious about Evereld’s safety.
“Upon my soul, Mactavish, it’s an ugly business,” he said uneasily, “a young girl fresh from school, innocent and ignorant and quite unprotected, crossing Europe alone! I hope to goodness she has gone to those friends of hers at Champéry. I will set off this morning and see. She would naturally think of them.”
“It’s possible,” said Sir Matthew, with a look of relief. “You go there, and I will go straight to London making close inquiry all along the route. Perhaps we may be able to learn something from the people in the hotel without rousing their curiosity too much. We must avoid getting the girl talked about. That would be fatal.”
“It’s a hateful business,” said Bruce Wylie frowning, “I wish I had never meddled with it.”
“There was more in the child than we dreamt of,” said Sir Matthew, “She was quiet and gentle and affectionate and I never thought it possible she would show so stubborn a front. Look at the letter. Why old Ewart himself might have penned it. As ill luck would have it, she heard the day before yesterday that changes have been made as to the investment of her money, and I fear she suspects that all is not right. How on earth she came to know anything about the Lord Chancellor and her power of appeal to him I can’t conceive.”
“Probably through ‘Iolanthe’ and the ‘such a susceptible Chancellor,’” said Bruce Wylie with a mirthless laugh, “or through some of her beloved Charles Dickens’ novels. The fact is, Mactavish, we educate our girls now-a-days, but expect them to remain fools. Unless we can track Evereld, and force her to obey you, she has the game in her own hands. Great Heaven! just think of it! That little girl can absolutely ruin our career, can give the pinprick which will burst the whole bubble.”
It was exasperating to the last degree, and to men who had always taken the lowest view of womanhood, it was wholly perplexing. They went down to the salle à manger trying to look unconcerned, but Miss Upton’s keen eyes read their perturbation.