“Oh, Roger, I was so frightened!” Grace confided to her bridegroom as they drove slowly back through the gloom to her father’s house. “I felt sure something dreadful had happened to you; and the fog coming on like this too! It—it seems so unlucky, so sinister!”
She shivered, and he clasped her more closely, with masculine indifference to the danger of crumpling her finery.
“Cheer up, darling, it’s all right. We shall soon be out of the fog and into the sunshine,” he laughed. “And the fog wasn’t the chief cause of delay, after all. I should have got to the church before it came on if I hadn’t had to go to Sir Robert. I was awfully upset about it, but it couldn’t be helped.”
“Why, is anything wrong?”
“Afraid so. Some important papers have disappeared. I put them in the safe myself last night; the Rawsons were dining out and I stayed rather late, over these very papers. When Sir Robert went to get them this morning they were gone, though there was nothing to show that the safe had been tampered with; in fact, it hadn’t. It’s a most mysterious thing!”
He tried to speak lightly, but her sensitive ears caught the note of anxiety in his voice, and that queer sense of foreboding assailed her afresh.
“Oh, Roger, have they been found?”
“They hadn’t when I came away soon after twelve.”
“Then—then what will happen? Were they very important?”
“Very,” he replied, ignoring the first question, which was really unanswerable. “However, it’s no use worrying about them, darling; if they should have turned up Sir Robert is sure to come or telephone. Here we are!”