“Well, Johnny Ludlow, I think it.”
To me it seemed to be growing serious. There might be nothing at all in what she had said; most people would have said there was nothing; but, sitting there in the quiet room listening to her earnest voice, seeing her anxious face, a feeling came over me that there was. What had become of Robert Ashton? Where could he be?
“I wish you would give me that shawl of mamma’s,” she said, pointing to one on a chair. “I feel cold.”
She was shivering when I put it over her pretty white shoulders and arms. And yet the fire was roaring to the very top of the grate.
“Alone here, while you were at dinner, I went over all sorts of probabilities,” she resumed, drawing the shawl round her as if she were out in the snow. “Of course there are five hundred things that might happen to him, but I can only think of one.”
“Well?” for she had stopped. She seemed to be speaking very unwillingly.
“If he walked he would be almost sure to take the near way, across the Ravine.”
Was she ever coming to the point? I said nothing. It was better to let her go on in her own way.
“I dare say you will say the idea is far-fetched, Johnny. What I think is, that he may have fallen down the Ravine, in coming here.”
Well, I did think it far-fetched. I’d as soon have expected her to say fallen down the chimney.