Where was Violet? Surely it was time that she was found! He sought eagerly, anxiously, through all the lower rooms of the house, then slowly and dejectedly ascended the staircase to return to his mother’s apartment.
At the head of the stairs he encountered Hilda. She was pale as death, and her dusky eyes gleamed with a curious, brassy light.
Leonard laid his hand upon her arm with a force that made her wince.
“Hilda”—his eyes burned into hers as he gazed full into their depths—“we must find Violet—find her at once! Do you hear me?”
She was trembling like a leaf; her hands were as cold as ice.
“Of course we will do all in our power to find her, Leonard,” she returned, sweetly; “but is it not foolish to insinuate that she is lost?”
“True.” He looked relieved. “She may be in her own room all this time. Go and see, Hilda, will you not?”
She smiled a cold smile, which chilled him somehow.
“I do not mean that she is still here,” she returned, slowly; “though of course I will go to her room and see if she is there. I mean this, Leonard: You know that she and—and Captain Venners were in the grounds together to-night, do you not?”
Leonard Yorke’s face grew white as death. Across his memory there flashed the scene in the shrubbery, where he had seen Violet—his Violet—in Will Venners’ arms.