“No, no,” said Harry hastily, as the maid moved towards the door; “never mind me; I’ll go in soon.”
The woman left him in the hall, and he waited till he heard the kitchen-door close, when he walked swiftly and softly to the glass window, and hurried into the office.
The inner office door was open, and he darted in, to hastily look all round, under table, chairs, beneath the bookshelves, among the newspapers that lay in places in a heap; but there was no sign of the missing trinket, and an icy feeling of dread began to grow upon him.
The waste-paper basket!
It was half full, and the locket might easily have dropped in there, but a hasty examination was without avail.
The fireplace!
He looked there, in the ready-laid fire, beneath the grate, in the fender; he even raised it, but without avail.
“It must be here somewhere,” he muttered fiercely; and he looked round again, and in amongst the papers on the table.
Still without avail.
“It is in the waste-paper basket,” he said, with a feeling of conviction upon him, as, trembling in every limb, he went to the other side of the table where it stood.