“I am not certain,” she replied.
“What shall you do?” asked Lawyer Merritt.
“Order a carriage, though it will be of little or no use, so far as the recovery of the child is concerned, if she has been carried off by the person whom I suspect,” Roma said, her lip beginning to quiver and her eyes to fill, despite all her firmness.
“Whom do you suspect, my dear?” inquired the parson, while the countenance of the lawyer expressed the question which he did not put in words.
“There is only one person open to suspicion,” she said.
“That dandy devil, Hanson!” exclaimed Mr. Merritt.
“Hanson! Yes, there can be little doubt but that he has had me under espionage for a long time past, even while he himself was far away, and has learned, among other facts, my adoption of and affection for this child, and may hope to get a hold on me through my attachment to her. Yet, really, the plan seems so futile, the means so inadequate to the end proposed, as to be quite unworthy of the intelligence even of Hanson. So he may not, after all, have been the abductor.”
“But if not Hanson, who then?” demanded Mr. Merritt.
“I don’t know. But we are losing precious time. I will go and order the carriage. Will you kindly accompany me to the village, gentlemen?”
“Certainly.” “Of course; with pleasure,” responded the parson and the lawyer in a breath.