"Well, well, I will bring her down, see if I don't. Come, Treewell, if she will not come without we will bring her."
So away we went upstairs, now satisfied that we were on the right trail, and that we had completely lulled all suspicion that we wanted anything of Lucy Smith, except to compel the poor heart-sick woman to join in a Bacchanalian revel, at which her soul revolted. Up, up we went, passed three "private rooms," in which we will not seek to look, for they are occupied by those who come veiled and in the dark. Here is the room we want. We knocked but received no welcome "come in."
How quick she would open the door if she knew who was waiting for admission. Tired of knocking, we enter unbidden, and find the room empty. The prisoner has escaped.
The truth flashed upon my mind in a moment. She has gone off with Mrs. May. Mr. Lovetree thought not, for Stella said they would not let her go out except some one in the house went with her to watch her.
"No matter. I am almost sure that woman has got her away. These women are great at contrivance. Very likely she came prepared for it, as Stella told her of course, all that Mrs. Morgan had told her."
We made a light and the first thing that Lovetree saw was the Bible, and Athalia's name—her age and birth-place and the age and names of her father and mother and grandfather and grandmother, a complete family record. I thought the man would go crazy. It would have made him nearly crazy if he had found her an inmate here, as much lost to shame as those we had just been carousing with, and now to find that she was not here put him into a perfect agony. He thought he could not live till morning without seeing her. At first we thought of going directly to Mrs. May's but then we recollected we did not know where she lived and could not find out, for I had lost her card that Stella gave me.
Finally we concluded to go down and talk a minute in the same kind of sang froid manner, to keep up our assumed characters and then go home and await coming events.
We were rallied as we entered the room with a jeering laugh at not being able to bring one woman between us both.
Then I pretended to get angry at being sent upon a fool's errand, to a room where nobody was at home. At that Mrs. Laylor started.
"Was she not in the room?"