“But you don’t seem in the least alarmed about her disappearance?”
“Why should I be? I rather expected it,” she answered; and it suddenly occurred to him whether, after all, she had been with Maud to the concert at Queen’s Hall on the night of the sudden removal.
A distinct suspicion seized him that she was concealing from him some fact which she feared to reveal—some fact that concerned herself more than Maud. He could see, in her refusal to satisfy him as to the girl’s confession, an attempt to mislead and mystify him, and he was just a trifle annoyed thereby. He liked open and honest dealing, and began to wonder whether this pretended promise of loyalty to her friend was not being put forward to hide some secret that was her own!
The two girls had, during the past few months, been inseparable. Had Maud really made a startling confession, or was the girl seated before him, with that strangely uneasy expression upon her beautiful countenance, endeavouring to deceive him?
He tried to put such thoughts behind him as unworthy of his devotion to her. But, alas! he could not.
Mystery was there—mystery that he was determined to elucidate.