“Let Miss Verena be told that we wait for her,” he said, waving his hand to Ozias.
Back came Ozias in a minute or two. “Miss Verena, she no upstairs, sir. She no anywhere.”
Of all the frowns that ever made a face ugly, the worst sat on Sir Dace Fontaine’s, as he turned to Coralie.
“Have you let her go out?” he asked.
“Why of course she is not out, papa,” answered Coralie, calm and smiling as usual.
“Let Esther go into Miss Verena’s room, Ozias, and ask her to come down at once.”
“Esther go this last time, Miss Coralie. She come down and say, Ozias, Miss Verena no upstairs at all; she go out.”
“How dare——” began Sir Dace; but Coralie interrupted him.
“Papa, I will go and see. I am sure Verena cannot be out; I am sure she is not. She went into her room to dress when I went into mine. She came to me while she was dressing asking me to lend her my pearl comb; she had just broken one of the teeth of her own. She meant to come down to dinner then and was dressing for it: she had no thought of going out.”
Coralie halted at the door to say all this, and then ran up the stairs. She came down crest-fallen. Verena had stolen a march on them. In Sir Dace Fontaine’s passionate anger, he explained the whole to us, taking but a few short sentences to do it. Verena had been beguiled into a marriage engagement with Edward Pym: he, Sir Dace, had forbidden her to go out of the house to meet him; and, as it appeared, she had set his authority at defiance. They were no doubt tramping off now to some place of amusement; a theatre, perhaps: the past evening they had gone to Madame Tussaud’s. “Will you take in Miss Fontaine, Squire?” concluded Sir Dace, with never a break between that and the explanation.