Elizabeth lifted troubled eyes to find a shadow of a twinkle in the eyes that met hers. She hurried on:
“I told him I was going to the library, but he asked me to take a spin in the Park, just a few minutes, to talk over old schooldays. He did not really wait for me to say whether I would. He just went—”
She was quite the most conscientious girl the father had met in thirty-five years. He wondered where she was brought up. He wondered if it could be genuine.
“Then when I said I must go back he asked me if I would just stop at a shop and help him pick out a gift for a friend. Of course I consented. It was on our way from Grevet’s to the Library that the truck ran into us. We were upset.”
“Murray was hurt?” There was a sharp ring of pain in the father’s tone, the first evidence of anxiety he had manifested.
“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth, “I didn’t think so at first, because they said he took me to the hospital. But after I read that in the paper, I thought if he had really disappeared perhaps he was hurt, and was somewhere in a hospital unconscious, and I ought to tell somebody. They say he brought me to the hospital in a taxi, so his car must have been injured.”
The father’s jaw took a hard line.
“What became of him after he brought you to the hospital? Were you hurt?”
“Not much, only shaken up, I guess, but I was some time coming to consciousness, and when they took me downstairs again they couldn’t find him. They said he had been very anxious and impatient to know how I was, so I supposed perhaps he had an engagement and had to go. I went home. I thought probably he would call up to know how I was, but when he didn’t I decided he must have found out at the hospital that I was all right, and hadn’t thought anything more of it.”
“H’m! That would have been a very gentlemanly thing to do, of course, get a girl smashed up and then go off without finding out whether she was dead or alive! I’m sure I hope that’s not what my son did, but there’s no telling!”