"I was just wondering if you and Norry meant to keep your rooms all day. Oh, you needn't make any apology; it is as easy to wait breakfast for two as for one. The boys and me"—(they were the "boys" still to Miss Hester Kent)—"had ours at seven o'clock. Now sit right down Mr. Gilbert, and I'll go and rout out Norry, and you and her can have your breakfast sociably together. You'll have a good many sociable breakfasts alone together, I dare say, before long. Gloomy sort of day now, ain't it?"
"Norine is not down then?" the lawyer said, startled a little, yet hardly knowing why.
"Not yet. She ain't often lazy o' mornings, ain't Norry, neither. You wait, though. I'll have her down in ten minutes."
He looked at her as though to say something, changed his mind suddenly, and took seat. Miss Kent left the room. Five minutes passed. Then she came rushing down the stairs, and back to his side, all white and frightened.
"Mr. Gilbert, Norine's not in her room! Her bed was not slept in at all last night!" She sat down all at once, pressing her hand hard over her heart. "I'm," she said, panting, "I'm very foolish, I know, but it has given me a turn."
He rose to his feet. He knew it then! As well as he ever knew it in the after time, Richard Gilbert knew it all at that moment, Norine had fled.
"It was she, then, who left the house last night," he said, in a hushed voice; "and it was a man's laugh! Was it— My God! Was it—"
He stopped, turning white with the horror of that thought.
"Call your brothers," he said, his voice ringing, his face setting white and stern as stone. "We must search for her at once. At all costs we must find her—must bring her back. Quick, Miss Kent! Your brothers! I am afraid Norine has fled."
"Fled!"