At first Flower had feared that something had happened to her lover, and in her desperation she had personally made inquiry at the hotel where he had boarded, and the clerk had told her that Mr. Meredith had settled his bill that evening and had his trunk sent down to the boat, saying that he was going home, as his father had written for him to come.
"I am very sorry," Flower said, falteringly. She saw the clerk's look of astonishment, and added: "Mr. Meredith lent me some books to read, and I would have liked to return them, but I did not know he was going away so soon. Have you any idea where I could send them?"
"No, I have not, miss; but I dare say Mr. Meredith desired you to keep them," returned the resplendent young clerk, with an admiring glance at the lovely young girl, which made her color hotly and immediately turn away.
"He will come back, or he will write soon and explain why he went away so suddenly. He may have been called away by a telegram. Perhaps some of his relatives are dead," she thought; and for several weeks she waited, expecting his return, or a letter at least.
Still she could not help feeling indignant at the way in which he had gone.
"He might have sent a note to let me know," she thought; but as time passed on without any explanation, she resolved to write to him and ask him why he had treated her so unkindly.
He had given her a card one day with his Northern address upon it, and she had put it away carefully in her little rosewood writing-desk.
But when she went to look for it the card was gone. Something else was gone, too—a paper that Laurie had given her to keep—an important document.
She nearly fainted at first; but, rousing herself, she went to her trunk and looked carefully through that, then her bureau drawers, thinking that perhaps she had removed it to another place.
But neither the card nor the paper was to be found.