“Don’t worry, Kimball will return. Why, he’s too wrapped up in that play of his to stay away from New York very long.”
“But there’s no sense to it all! If somebody spirited Kim off for a joke,—they’d surely returned him in time for the ceremony.”
“You’d think so. And the only other alternative is to think that he went away voluntarily,—which is, to say the least, hard on Elsie.”
“He never went away because he didn’t want to marry her,—not much!”
“Mrs. Webb thinks he was spirited away.”
“So do I! But by very human and physical spirits! I firmly believe Henrietta Webb or her mother, or both, managed the whole business, and they will keep Kim out of the way until after Elsie’s birthday, thinking she will marry some one else, and then they’ll produce Kim!”
“A queer theory, but perhaps about the easiest one to believe. And if, as you assume, Elsie won’t marry some one else,—what then?”
“That’s what I said a few minutes ago. And it will come hardest on mother and me. Elsie doesn’t care much for money,—oh, of course, she likes things comfortable,—she doesn’t realize what it would mean to have them any other way,—but she’d give up all for love. Now, mother and I have absolutely no income except the interest Elsie gets from the Powell money. And I have two little children—and mother is practically an invalid,—and I think I may well ask, what then?”
“I think so too, Gerty! It’s tough on you,—I didn’t know all this. Why, it will be awful if Elsie doesn’t marry! What will become of you all?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how Elsie’s going to look at it. If she sees it right, and if Kimball never returns, of course, she ought to marry some nice man rather than let all that money go! But she’s quite capable of refusing point blank to marry any one but Kim,—and that’s what I think she’ll do.”