This to the curate, the only one remaining in the room with her.
“I do, decidedly. Surely no harm has happened her. I trust not. How could there?”
“True, how? Still I’m a little apprehensive, and won’t feel satisfied till I see her. How my heart does palpitate, to be sure.”
She lays her spread palm over the cardiac region, with an expression less of pain, than the affectation of it.
“Well, Eleanor,” she calls out to the companion, re-entering the room with Gibbons behind. “What news?”
“Not any, aunt.”
“And you really think she hasn’t slept in her room?”
“Almost sure she hasn’t. The bed, as Gibbons told you, has never been touched, nor the sofa. Besides, the dress she wore last night isn’t there.”
“Nor anywhere else, ma’am,” puts in the maid; about such matters specially intelligent. “As you know, ’twas the sky-blue silk, with blonde lace over-skirt, and flower-de-loose on it. I’ve looked everywhere, and can’t find a thing she had on—not so much as a ribbon!”
The other searchers are now returning in rapid succession, all with a similar tale. No word of the missing one—neither sign nor trace of her.