She was getting ready to go, when the first rumble of the hurricane made itself heard. Nannie dropped in, and—
"'Where's Elizabeth?' I'm sure I don't know. Isn't she at home? 'Stayed with me last night?' Why, no, she didn't. I haven't seen Elizabeth for two days, and—"
Nannie sprang to catch poor old Miss White, who reeled, and then tried, as she sank into a chair, to speak: "What? What? Not with you last night? Nannie! She must have been. She told me she was going—" Miss White grew so ghastly that Nannie, in a panic, called a servant.
"Send for her uncle!" the poor lady stammered. "Send—send. Oh, what has happened to my child?" Then she remembered the letter addressed to Mr. Ferguson, lying on the table beside David's telegram. "Perhaps that will say where she is. Oh, tell him to hurry!"
When Robert Ferguson reached home he found the two pallid, shaking women waiting for him in the hall. Miss White, clutching that unopened letter, tried to tell him: Elizabeth had not been at Nannie's; she had not come home; she had—
"Give me the letter," he said. They watched him tear it open and run his eye over it; the next instant he had gone into his library and slammed the door in their faces.
Outside in the hall the trembling women looked at each other in silence. Then Nannie said with a gasp, "She must have gone to—to some friend's."
"She has no friend she would stay all night with but you."
"Well, you see she has written to Mr. Ferguson, so there can't be anything much the matter; he'll tell us where she is, in a minute! If he can't, I'll make Blair go and look for her. Dear, dear Miss White, don't cry!"
"There has been an accident. Oh, how shall we tell David? He's coming to-morrow to talk over the wedding, and—"