For it was now Monday, August 9th!
Eighteen days had elapsed since the sailing of the St. Louis from New York, on July 21st!
CHAPTER IX
What was the explanation? Kitty wondered, much perplexed.
Her father had left Vancouver and had gone to New York—so she gathered from the cablegram. And as he had not been to see her she concluded that he could not be in England, and that meant in the circumstances that he had not sailed from New York on the 21st of July as he had intended. Gilbert had suggested to her that her father had been unexpectedly detained, and at first, as this seemed a probable solution of the problem, she was inclined to think this was what had occurred.
But, as she reflected further, it did not seem so likely. For supposing he had been forced to delay his journey for a whole week, and had exchanged his berth on the St. Louis for one on the boat of the same line sailing a week later, that is, on the 28th, there would still have been plenty of time for him to have arrived in England and to have seen her, as he would have reached Southampton by the 3rd of August, or by the 4th at latest. And it was now the 9th!
As Kitty tried to puzzle the matter out, her fears, vague, but none the less distressing, were greatly increased, and she began to suspect that something, she knew not what, had happened to her father.
Gilbert, now as anxious as Kitty was, was at Surbiton in the evening to hear what news she had received from Vancouver, and he was as much bewildered as she by the cablegram from Wallace, Morris Thornton's agent. All he could do was to remind her, as he had done before, that the delay in her father's coming, as well as his silence, might all be part of his scheme to "surprise" her. But Kitty replied that this made her father out as unkind in the extreme; she was sure he would never willingly put such a strain upon her affection.
"I can't make it out at all," she said, wrinkling her pretty brows. "It seems very singular that he does not write."