“Ill? I’ll come on at once.”
“No, miss; gone,” whispered Liza hoarsely; and in a blundering way she whispered all she knew.
“I’ll come on and see Mr Vine,” said Madelaine hastily, and Liza ran back while her blundering narrative, hastily delivered, had naturally a confusing effect upon one just awakened from sleep.
Louise gone, Mr Leslie found bleeding, Mr Vine sitting alone in his room busy over the molluscs in his aquaria! It seemed impossible. Aunt Marguerite hysterical. Everything so strange.
No mention had been made of Uncle Luke by the girl, nor yet of Leslie’s departure.
“Am I still dreaming?” Madelaine asked herself as she hastily dressed, “or has some fresh terrible disaster come upon us?”
“Upon us,” she said, for the two families seemed so drawn together that one could not suffer without thrilling the other’s nerves.
“Louise gone! It is impossible!”
She said that again and again, trying all the while to be cool and think out what were best to be done. She felt that it would be better not to alarm her father by waking him at that early hour, and that she could not arouse her mother without his knowing.
She was not long in deciding.