“They’ve all gone,” laughed Elaine, happily, taking her bedroom candle from Dorothy’s hand, “they’ve all gone, every single one, and now we’re going to have some good times.”
Dick watched her as she went upstairs, the candlelight shining tenderly upon her sweet face, and thus betrayed himself to Dorothy, who had suspected for some time that he loved Elaine.
“Oh Lord!” grumbled Dick to himself, when he was safely in his own room. “Everybody knows it now, except her. I’ll bet even Sis Smithers and the cat are dead next to me. I might as well tell her to-morrow as any time, the result will be just the same. Better do it and have it over with. The cat’ll tell her if nobody else does.”
But that night, strangely enough, Claudius Tiberius disappeared, to be seen or heard of no more.
XX
The Love of Another Elaine
When Dick and Harlan ventured up to the sanitarium, they were confronted by the astonishing fact that Uncle Israel was, indeed, ill. Later developements proved that he was in a measure personally responsible for his condition, since he had, surreptitiously, in the night, mixed two or three medicines of his own brewing with the liberal dose of a different drug which the night nurse gave him, in accordance with her instructions.
Far from being unconscious, however, Uncle Israel was even now raging violently against further restraint, and demanding to be sent home before he was “murdered.”