"Meet them? No, did they set out to look for us?"
"That's what we don't know, madam. Bowers thought so, but I said all along they wouldn't do a thing like that on a night as cold as this is. All I do know is, they aren't in the house."
"What's that?" Charles stopped arguing with Mrs. Bosanquet, and stepped to his wife's side. "When did they go out?"
"It must have been about ten o'clock, sir, from what Bowers tells me."
"But how funny!" said Celia. "What in the world cann have possessed them? Do you suppose they got bored, and went to look up the Colonel?"
"Well, Miss Celia, they may have done so, but all I can say is it's not like Miss Margaret to go ordering a fire to be lit if she means to go out the moment it's done."
"A fire? Did she order a fire?" Charles asked.
"Yes, sir, she did. Mr. Peter came out to the kitchen with the library scuttle, which was empty." She looked over her shoulder at Bowers. "Round about ten o'clock that would have been, wouldn't it, Bowers?"
Just about then, or maybe a minute or two after," Bowers agreed.
"But you say they went out at ten," frowned Charles. "So they must have, sir," Bowers replied. "Because it didn't take me more than five minutes to fill the scuttle, and when I took it back to the library, which I did straight away, there wasn't a sign of either of them. I didn't set much store by it, but when I came back with the tray ten minutes after that, and they still weren't there, I did think it was a bit funny, and I mentioned it to Mrs. Bowers, just in a casual way."