Laura looked up, startled. "Oh, Katty, don't you think that would make him very angry—if he's all right, I mean?"
"Perhaps it would," Katty agreed uncomfortably.
She went back to the telephone. "Mrs. Pavely thinks we'd better wait a little longer before saying anything to the police," she called out.
And thus it was through Laura, as Katty reminded herself in days to come, that two more precious days were lost.
CHAPTER XV
"WELL, my dear—any more news?" But even as Mrs. Tropenell, looking up from her breakfast-table, asked the question, she knew what the answer would be.
It was the following Monday morning. The post had just come in, and at once, knowing that the postman called first at The Chase, Oliver had hurried off to the telephone. He had been there a long time—perhaps as long as ten minutes—and when he came back into the dining-room his mother was struck afresh by the look of almost intolerable strain and anxiety in his face and eyes.
They had spent a great part of Sunday with Laura, and during that long, trying day Mrs. Tropenell had felt very much more concerned about her son than she did about Godfrey Pavely.
Godfrey, so she told herself, with a touch of unreason not usual with her, would almost certainly turn up all right—even if, as she was inclined to believe possible, he had met with some kind of accident. But Oliver, her beloved, the only human being in the world that really mattered to her—what was wrong with him? Long after she had gone to bed each evening she had heard him, during the last three nights, wandering restlessly about the house.