"I was doing nothing of the kind--your anxiety need not make you rude, Worth. However, she put the letter under the door, and I saw that it was your handwriting, and so urgent that I was quite flurried, and she was off in two minutes, without my even kissing her. Oh, poor dear! My little dear! She said good-bye through the key-hole, and could not wait for me even to kiss her!"
At this thought the elderly lady broke down, and could for the moment do nothing but sob.
"Dear heart, dear heart!" cried the Squire, who was deeply attached to his sister; "don't take on so, my dear good Joan! We know of no harm as yet--that is"--for he thought of the coil of hair, but with strong effort forbore to speak of it--"nothing I mean in any way positive, or disastrous. She may have, you know--she may have taken it into her head to--to leave us for awhile, Joan."
"To run away! To elope! Not she! She is the last girl in the world to do it. Whatever may have happened, she has not done that. You ought to know better than that, Worth."
"Perhaps I do; I have no more time to talk of that, or any other thing. I shall hurry into Oxford, and see John Smith, and let everybody know of it. What do I care what people think? Send a man on horseback to Beckley at once. Have you any man worth a pinch of salt? You are always changing so."
"I cannot keep cripples, or sots, dear brother. Take any one you please of them."
"Any one who will deign to come, you should say. Deep snow tries the mettle of new-comers."
Meanwhile, Esther Cripps, who perhaps could have thrown some light on this strange affair, was very uneasy in her mind. She had not heard, of course, as yet, that Grace Oglander was missing. But she could not get rid of the fright she had felt, and the dread of some dark secret. Her sister-in-law was in such a condition that she must not be told of it; and as for her brother Exodus, it would be worse than useless to speak to him. He had taken it into his head, ever since that business with the "College gent," that his sister was not "right-minded"--that she dreamed things, and imagined things; and that anything she liked to say should be listened to, and thought no more of. And Baker Cripps was one of those men from whose minds no hydraulic power can lift an idea--laid once, laid for ever.