“I’m glad I’m not impressed by your dark views about it,” Elsie said, smiling at the old lady, whom she really liked, in spite of her absurd beliefs.
Mrs. Webb was more kindly disposed toward Elsie than Henrietta, and Elsie responded gratefully.
“You’ll change your mind,” she went on, to Mrs. Webb, “when I make a triumphant rescue of my beloved. Oh,” she burst out, suddenly, “don’t you feel sorry for me? Think, a bride, left alone on her wedding day!”
“A deserted—” began Henrietta, but Elsie turned on her like a young tempest.
“No! Not a deserted wife! My Kimball didn’t desert me,—and this minute, wherever he is, he is planning and striving to get back to me. That is, if he’s conscious,—and, I know he is! I’d die if I didn’t believe that!”
She ran from the room and made her way up to Kimball’s room.
It was no longer kept locked, and it had been swept and garnished, so that any clues, if there ever had been any, had been removed.
“But,” Elsie mused, sadly, “how could there have been any clues? Clues to what?” She couldn’t believe an intruder had carried Kim off, for there was no possible way for an intruder to get in or out. What she really thought was that he had been lured away; say somebody had telephoned him and he had gone off suddenly, or something like that. How he locked the door after him and the hall door, too, was a stumbling block, but she didn’t try to get over it.
She wandered about the large, pleasant room. On the chiffonier was her own photograph in a silver frame. Scattered about were several trifles she had given him; a paper-knife, a single flower vase, a calendar.
She looked in the scrap-basket,—it was empty.