"Are you afraid she has run away—that she is making for Paris, or London?" she whispered.
Yvonne nodded. She could not speak. For the first time in her life she understood what hysteria meant.
"To join Rupert Fosdyke?" persisted her mother.
"Oh, I don't know! I am afraid—terribly afraid!" was the broken answer.
"But—it is inconceivable. A rustic of her type can have no attractions for a man like him. She would weary him in a day."
Yvonne did not reply; and in her heart Mrs. Carmac knew why. Rupert Fosdyke might share her half-veiled contempt for one of the "lower orders"; but he would have no scruples in using poor Madeleine's infatuation as a whip to scourge certain folk in Pont Aven.
Inquiry at the station was almost fruitless. Yvonne dared not appeal to the conductor of the tramway service, because any hue and cry raised for the missing girl must reach Pont Aven in the course of a few hours. She ascertained that no young woman in Breton costume had bought a ticket to Paris or St. Malo that day. This signified little. The very fact that the coif identifies the Bretonne would induce Madeleine to travel in an empty first-class carriage and change her outer garments.
"Was any ticket issued for a long journey to a girl of twenty after the arrival of the first train from Pont Aven?" said Yvonne as a last resource.
The booking clerk was inclined to be helpful. Not often did young American ladies speak French with such an accent. Usually they misunderstood him, or blandly assumed that he spoke English.