"Believe what, Mrs. White?"'
"Why, what's in the paper," replied the landlady; "you've read the papers, I suppose? I presumed that was why you came."
"I read the papers," said Clara, "and I came to inquire about Ivan. Do you refer to the suggested irregularities in his accounts? Of course I do not believe anything of that kind."
"Dear, no! I didn't suppose you did. I meant about my daughter Lizzie."
"Your daughter!" exclaimed Clara in a low voice, while Louise hid her face in her hands. "What do you mean? Let me see the paper."
More agitated than ever, Mrs. White produced a copy of the paper that Mr. Pembroke had withheld from his niece.
"I must have overlooked this," said Clara, wonderingly, as she saw that the account differed in style from those she had read. The reporter of this paper, sharper than his rivals, had somehow discovered that Lizzie White had left her home, and he set forth the circumstances with every delicate turn that language would allow to suggest a connection between her flight and Ivan's disappearance.
"It is shrewdly suspected by the friends of Strobel," so the story ran, "that as the time of his marriage approached, he found his fancy for Miss White stronger than his love for Miss Hilman, and that he chose elopement with the former as less dishonorable than marriage with the latter."
The writer then proceeded to an elaborate explanation of how Strobel might himself have arranged the wheel of his coupé so that it would fall off, and how he might then, by previous understanding with the second cabman, who was also conveniently missing, have been driven to the Park Square railroad station, where he waited for Miss White. It was entirely possible that they might have taken the one o'clock train for New York, if not the noon train.
Clara was very pale when she laid the paper down, but her faith in Ivan was not so much as touched by doubt.