"It is queer."
"Shall I have dinner served?"
"No, I will wait half an hour."
"It's too bad. The roast will be overdone, I am afraid."
"Well, it probably cannot be helped."
Robert drifted into the library, and selecting a volume of Cooper's works, sat down in an easy chair to read. But he could not fasten his attention on the story, and soon cast the volume aside.
"Is it possible that anything has happened to Mrs. Vernon?" was the question which he asked himself over and over again.
He thought of Frederic Vernon and Dr. Remington, and of what Dick Marden had said.
"Would Frederic Vernon dare to do anything?" he asked himself.
The evening passed slowly and painfully. As hour after hour went by Robert began to pace the floor nervously. He felt "in his bones," as the saying is, that something was wrong, but he could not exactly imagine what.