"Where is he?" I reiterated. "Tell me!"
Mr. Leach placed his finger-tips together, and looked at me with an expression almost like placid amusement.
"Mrs. Linton," he said slowly, "I am a man of business, and have seen strange things in my time, so you mustn't be offended if I ask you a question. Mr. Linton had the money ready for us, you say. In what form was it?"
"In notes, sir," I replied. "He told me you declined taking anything else."
"Yes, yes—except gold. So we did. We are bound to be careful. Now, Mrs. Linton—mind, I mean no offense—do you know that your husband was much embarrassed?"
"I know he could pay all just debts—and unjust ones, too," I answered, with rising indignation.
"Yes, of course. All just and unjust debts. All unjust debts—very good. Now, do you think it possible—ten thousand is a lot of money—do you think it possible that Mr. Linton may have—well, in plain English, decamped with it?"
I heard no more. My face was flaming. I rose and, without another word, left the room. I was in the cab before Mr. Leach had recovered from his surprise, and in another minute was sobbing my poor heart out on the shoulder of my maid—a faithful, good girl who loved me.
I can not tell you of the next few days. The uncertainty of everything, yet, to me, the utter hopelessness. The dread of what any moment might make known to me. The searchers searching and hoping to find—what? For I knew that the success of their quest could only bring me the dead body of my darling—murdered, perhaps, for the sake of the money he carried. Yet hardest of all to bear was the knowledge that the sorrow manifested by those around me was only assumed out of respect to me; that no one believed Walter to be dead; that the wicked, cruel slander which had framed itself in Mr. Leach's mind had entered into the minds of others. I could read the thought in the faces of all who came near me during those days. I knew that the paid seekers performed their task with a smile on their lips—that the word went around among them that, in order to be successful, the search should be, not for a dead, but for a living man, to find whom it was needful to look further away. How was it I did not go mad?
I cared nothing when some one told me that the property, house, and all were advertised for sale in a few weeks' time. I thought of nothing, saw nothing but the cold, still face of the one I loved. I wished for nothing now but to see his name cleared from the stain thrown upon it—a stain he would have heeded more than death; this done, I wished to die—that was all. The wild thought which had at first entered my head, that the men to whom he owed the money had taken it and made away with him, was at last dispelled; for proof was positive that Walter had not gone to Bristol on that fatal morning. The passengers from the station were too few, and Walter too well known not to have been noticed. Indeed, no ticket for the class by which he would certainly have traveled had been issued that day. No one had met him that morning, and he had disappeared without leaving a trace; for people told me that every inch of the country near had been scoured. But I knew they deceived me, and that the wicked thought was in every heart, although no one dared to speak it in words to me who knew him and loved him.