“He’s a great blarneyer is Val Tracy,” Harriot remarked calmly. “He seems to think that every girls wants him to be in love with her. Such silliness!”
Dorothea did not reply to this observation. She looked after the troop till it was out of sight, then turned back into the house.
“What’s come over you all of a sudden?” Harriot demanded. “You look as if you’d lost your best friend.”
“Nonsense!” Dorothea declared, but her cousin was not convinced.
It was not until well on in the afternoon that Dorothea saw Miss Imogene alone and then there was a little satisfaction to be gotten out of talking things over. The elder lady could offer no solution to the problems that perplexed them both. Whether Val Tracy had helped Stanchfield to escape or whether, on the other hand, he was at that moment trying to effect his capture they neither of them could determine. There was plenty of evidence to confirm either conclusion.
“All we can do is to wait till Val comes back,” Miss Imogene remarked disconsolately.
“But even then we may not be able to tell, unless he says something about it,” Dorothea replied.
“That is true too, honey,” Miss Imogene conceded. “But there is nothing else for it. I only pray the boy has escaped. It was a bold move to take Val’s horse, but it was only boldness that offered a chance of escape.”
“But we thought Val had helped him,” Dorothea suggested, and Miss Imogene, nodding her head in agreement, replied,
“We only hoped, honey, but it was most improbable. At all events we don’t know anything, we’ll just have to wait.”