‘Did he not marry you?’
‘Marry me!’ repeated Ada, in a fearful voice of bitterness, scorn, and despair. ‘Nay, he only swore he would, again and again.’
‘And—and——’ she shivered still. ‘And when was this?’
‘It was in March,’ replied Ada, with stony composure. ‘When I was staying in Wensleydale, and he was in Friarsdale, and he met me every day, and said he’d never cared for anybody else. I’ve written to him—a hundred letters. He has never answered one. I thought he was at home now; I heard so. I came to tell him he must—to shame him, if I couldn’t persuade him; and now ... he’s not here. No one knows ... where he is.’
With an hysterical sob she sank together in the corner of a couch.
‘In March,’ Eleanor was repeating to herself, with mechanical calm, and clenching her hands, to keep herself still. ‘March—and this is October. There is yet time.’
That was all she could think of at the moment. There was no time, no possibility for anything else. Her brain felt wound up to this emergency, and to nothing more. She walked up to Ada, and touched her.
‘Your parents—what do they know?’
‘Nothing,’ said Ada, in a dull, colourless monotone. ‘Mother is away, or I dare not have come home. Father is away for the night. He’ll be back to-morrow: he will find out ... he will turn me out of doors. Oh, Miss Askam, save me, save me, save me!’
‘Hush!’ said Eleanor, quietly. ‘Let me think. Some one must have known—the people you were staying with—your aunt?’