"Where is my granddaughter?" he demanded.
"That is what we should all like to know, sir," said Geoffrey, "but what none of us do know. We were talking of that when you came in. I am sorry to say she has left our house. She has run away. The rest of us were out, and she had a sort of quarrel—a misunderstanding—with one of my sisters——"
"With the one, no doubt, who ransacked her boxes and called her a thief and a burglar," interpolated Mr. Anstruther.
"And she ran straight out of the house. We are hoping she means to come back, but we are very much afraid she will not."
"I am dreadfully upset about it," said Mrs. Danvers helplessly. "If you had only come an hour—even half an hour—ago, you would have found her here safe and sound. If anything happens to her—such a dreadful foggy night as it is, too—I shall never forgive myself for not having known she was going to run away, and stopped her."
"I fail to see any reason for anticipating that harm will come to her," said Mr. Anstruther harshly. He turned to Eleanor, "Perhaps you, Miss Carson, as her accomplice in this disgraceful business, can inform us where she would be likely to go?"
"She would come up to me," Eleanor answered; "that was the agreement we had both made, that if either of us were suddenly found out, or couldn't for any reason continue any longer to be the other, we would come and say so at once. She knows the way quite well; she often came up in the afternoon to see me."
"Yes, but it is one thing to find your way there on a summer's afternoon," said Mrs. Danvers nervously, "but quite another on a night like this. Why, the fog is now so thick that you can't see a yard in front of you down here even; and if it is like that here, it will be ten times worse up on the downs, and instead of finding her way to Windy Gap, she would be far more likely to walk in the opposite direction."
"Oh, don't say that, mother, for the opposite direction would lead her straight over the cliffs," said Geoffrey, and was immediately sorry for his thoughtless remark when he saw how alarmed Mrs. Danvers became; "but I agree with you that she is not very likely to arrive at Windy Gap in such a fog as this, so I suggest that we turn ourselves into a search party without loss of time, and go and look for her."
"One minute, if you please," said Mr. Anstruther; "when you say 'we,' to whom do you refer?"