"It is a subject upon which I have given no thought," she replied, coldly.
"Somehow I hoped that she might have come to you."
A pallor crept about the full lips that Pyne was not slow to see.
He was aware also of the sudden tightening of the hands about a paper-cutter that she had taken up, and of the quick, questioning glitter that came to her eyes, to fade almost at once under the restraint that she was putting upon herself.
"To me?" she repeated, frigidly. "I fail to see why you should have thought that. I scarcely knew Miss Cuyler."
"But you interested yourself in her once. She might have thought that you would again."
"I had really forgotten her. What I did was not interest, but humanity. She would never have come to me for anything."
The very manner of the utterance of the words convinced Pyne that she had been there, and that Miss Chandler, his handsome fiancee, knew more of the disappearance than she proposed to tell.
What was the secret that linked those two together, and what had Miss Chandler done with the young woman who seemed to possess some secret that she was determined to have concealed?
He knew that he could discover nothing further from her. He knew that inquiry would bring forth no further information, and that the only possible hope of ascertaining was to wait and watch.