Miss Lansdowne smiled.
“She is an odd little creature,” she said, “but she has a very good heart. To hear her deplore the disappearance of a young girl whom she was fond of and kind to,” and Miss Lansdowne looked steadily away from Clifford as she spoke, “no one could doubt the depth of her feelings.”
Clifford was silent for a few moments. Then he glanced at the face of the girl beside him, saw that it invited confidence, and guessed that her last words had been carefully chosen.
“You mean that Miss Claris has disappeared?”
“Yes. You had heard about it, I suppose?” she asked, with a pretense of indifference.
“Of course.”
“And that nobody knows more than this—that she and her uncle have gone away?”
Clifford answered, with scarcely a pretense on his side of concealing the emotion he felt:
“I went down to the place myself, saw the house shut up, deserted, and found that nobody could tell me more than this—that George Claris had gone mad, and that he was in an asylum; and that his niece had gone away at the same time. If you can tell me anything more, I shall be very grateful to you.”
“I don’t know any more than you do. One can only guess—or repeat the guesses of others.”