"Why you did not meet me?" inquired Dollie coldly, with a little surprised movement of her arched brows. "Why you did not meet me?" she repeated.
"I shall have to ask you to believe that, in the circumstances, it was absolutely impossible," Dick continued, preferring not to notice the singular emphasis of her words. "Something occurred early that evening which—which left me no choice in the matter. I can readily understand your indignation and humiliation at my failure to appear, and I had no way of reaching you that evening or since. News of your return last night only reached me an hour ago. I knew you had disappeared."
Dollie's blue eyes were opened to the widest and her lips parted a little in astonishment. For a moment she sat thus, staring at the young man, then she sank back into her chair with a little gasp.
"May I inquire," she asked, after she recovered her breath, "the cause of this—this levity?"
"Dollie, dear, I am perfectly serious," Dick assured her earnestly. "I am trying to make it plain to you, that's all."
"Why you did not meet me?" Dollie repeated again. "Why you did meet me! And that's—that's what's the matter with everything!"
Whatever surprise or other emotion Dick might have felt was admirably repressed.
"I thought perhaps there was some mistake somewhere," he said at last. "Now, Dollie, listen to me. No, wait a minute please! I did not go to the Randolph ball. You did. You eloped from that ball, as you and I had planned, in an automobile, but not with me. You went with some other man—the man who really stole the gold plate."
Dollie opened her mouth to exclaim, then shut it suddenly.
"Now just a moment, please," pleaded Dick. "You spoke to some other man under the impression that you were speaking to me. For a reason which does not appear now, he fell in with your plans. Therefore, you ran away with him—in the automobile which carried the gold plate. What happened after that I cannot even surmise. I only know that you are the mysterious woman who disappeared with the Burglar."