When Blair came home, a little after eleven, she had gone.

At first he did not grasp the significance of her absence. He called to her from their parlor: "I want to tell you about the play; perfect trash!" No answer. He glanced through the open door of her bedroom; not there. He hurried to his own room, crying: "Elizabeth! Where are you?" Then stood blankly waiting. Had she gone down-stairs? He went out into the hall and, leaning over the banisters, listened to the stillness—that unhuman stillness of a hotel corridor; but there was no bang of an iron door, no clanking rumble of an ascending elevator. Had she gone out? He looked at his watch, and his heart came up into his throat; out—at this hour! But perhaps after he had left her, she had suddenly decided to spend the night at her uncle's or Nannie's. In that case she would have left word in the office. He was thrusting his arms into his overcoat and settling his hat on his head, even while he was dashing downstairs to inquire:

"Has Mrs. Maitland left any message for me?"

The clerk looked vague: "We didn't see her go out, sir. But I suppose she went by the ladies' entrance. No; she didn't leave any message, sir."

Blair suddenly knew that he was frightened. He could not have said why. Certainly he was not conscious of any reason for fright; but some blind instinct sent a wave of alarm all through him. His knees felt cold; there was a sinking sensation just below his breast-bone.

"What an ass I am!" he said to himself; "she has gone to her uncle's, of course." He said something of the kind, with elaborate carelessness, to the clerk; "if she comes back before I do, just say I have gone out on an errand." He was frightened, but not to the extent of letting that inquisitive idiot behind the counter know it. "If he had been attending to his business," he thought, angrily, "he would have seen her go, and he could have told me when it was. I'll go to Mr. Ferguson's. Of course she's there."

He stood on the curb-stone for a minute, looking for a carriage; but the street was deserted. He could not take the time to go to the livery-stable. He started hurriedly; once he broke into a run, then checked himself with the reminder that he was a fool. As he drew near her uncle's house, he began to defend himself against disappointment: "She's at Nannie's. Why did I waste time coming here? I know she is at Nannie's!"

Robert Ferguson's house was dark, except for streaks of light under the blinds of the library windows. Blair, springing up the front steps, rang; then held his breath to listen for some one coming through the hall; his heart seemed smothering in his throat. "I know she isn't here; she's at Nannie's," he told himself. He was acutely conscious of the dank smell of the frosted honeysuckle clinging limply to the old iron trellis that inclosed the veranda; but when the door opened he was casual enough—except for a slight breathlessness.

"Mr. Ferguson! is Elizabeth here?"

"No," Robert Ferguson said, surprised, "was she coming here?"

"She was to be here, or—or at Nannie's," Blair said, carelessly, "I didn't know which. I'll go and get her there." His own words reassured him, and he apologized lightly. "Sorry to have disturbed you, sir. Good-night!" And he was gone before another question could be asked. But out in the street he found himself running. "Of course she's at Nannie's!" he said, panting. He even had a twinge of anger at Elizabeth for giving him all this trouble. "She ought to have left word," he thought, crossly. It was a relief to be cross; nothing very serious can have happened to a person who merely makes you cross. The faint drizzle of the early evening had turned to rain, which added to his irritation. "She's all right; and it's confoundedly unpleasant to get soaking wet," he reflected. Yes; he was honestly cross. Yet in spite of the reassurances of his mind and his temper, his body was still frightened; he was hurrying; his breath came quickly. He dashed on, so absorbed in denying his alarm that on one of the crossings only a quick leap kept him from being knocked down by a carriage full of revelers. "Here, you! Look out! What's the matter with you?" the cab-driver yelled, pulling his horses back and sidewise, but not before the pole of the hack had grazed Blair's shoulder. There was a screech of laughter, a woman's vociferating fright, a whiff of cigar smoke, and a good-natured curse: "Say, darn you, you're too happy to be out alone, sonny!" Blair did not hear them. Shantytown, black and silent and wet, huddled before him; from the smokestacks of the Works banners of flame flared out into the rain, and against them his mother's house loomed up, dark in the darkness. At the sight of it all his panic returned, and again he tried to discount his disappointment: "She isn't here, of course; she has gone to the hotel. Why didn't I wait for her there? What a fool I am!" But back in his mind, as he banged the iron gate and rushed up the steps, he was saying: "If she isn't here—?"

The house was absolutely dark; the fan-light over the great door was black; there was no faintest glimmer of light anywhere. Everybody was asleep. Blair rang violently, and pounded on the panels of the door with both hands. "Nannie! Elizabeth! Harris!—confound the old idiot! why doesn't he answer the bell? Nannie—"

A window opened on the floor above. "What is it?" demanded a quavering feminine voice. "Who's there?"

"Nannie! Darn it, why doesn't somebody answer the bell in this house?
Is Elizabeth—" His voice died in his throat.

"Oh, Blair! Is that you? You scared me to death," Nannie called down.
"What on earth is the matter?"

"Is—is Elizabeth here?"

"Elizabeth? No; of course not! Where is she?"

"If I knew, would I be asking you?" Blair called back furiously; "she must be here!"

"Wait. I'll come down and let you in," Nannie said; he heard a muffled colloquy back in the room, and then the window closed sharply. Far off, a church clock struck one. Blair stood with a hand on the doorknob; through the leaded side-windows he saw a light wavering down through the house; a moment later Nannie, lamp in hand, shivering in her thin dressing-gown, opened the door.

"Has she been here this evening?"

"Blair! You scare me to death! No; she hasn't been here. What is the matter? Your coat is all wet! Is it raining?"

"She isn't at the hotel, and I don't know where she is."

"Why, she's at Mr. Ferguson's, of course!"

"No, she isn't. I've been there."

"She may be at home by this time," Nannie faltered, and Blair, assenting, was just turning to rush away, when another voice said, with calm peremptoriness:

"What is the matter?"

Blair turned to see Mrs. Richie. She had come quietly down-stairs, and was standing beside Nannie. Even in his scared preoccupation, the sight of David's mother shook him. "I—I thought," he stammered, "that you had gone home, Mrs. Richie."

"She had a little cold, and I would not let her go until to-morrow morning," Nannie said; "you always take more cold on those horrid sleeping-cars." Nannie had no consciousness of the situation; she was far too alarmed to be embarrassed. Blair cringed; he was scarlet to his temples; yet under his shame, he had the feeling that he had when, a little boy, he clung to David's pretty mother for protection.

"Oh, Mrs. Richie," he said, "I am so worried about Elizabeth!"

"What about her?"

"She said something this afternoon that frightened me."

"What?"

But he would not tell her. "It was nothing. Only she was very angry; and—she will do anything when she is angry." Mrs. Richie gave him a look, but he was too absorbed to feel its significance. "It was something about—well, a sort of silly threat. I didn't take it in at the time; but afterward I thought perhaps she meant something. Really, it was nothing at all. But—" his voice died in his throat and his eyes were terrified. There was such pain in his face that before she knew it David's mother was sorry for him; she even put her hand on his shoulder.

"It was just a mood," she comforted him. And Blair, taking the white, maternal hand in both of his, looked at her speechlessly; his chin trembled. Instantly, without words of shame on one side or of forgiveness on the other, they were back again, these two, in the old friendship of youth and middle age. "It was a freak," said Mrs. Richie, soothingly. "She is probably at the hotel by this time. Don't be troubled, Blair. Go and see. If she isn't at the hotel let me know at once."

"Yes, yes; I will," Blair said. "She must be there now, of course. I know there's nothing the matter, but I don't like to have her out so late by herself." He turned to open the front door, fumbling with haste over the latch; Nannie called to him to wait and she would get him an umbrella. But he did not hear her. He was saying to himself that of course she was at the hotel; and he was off again into the darkness!

As the door banged behind him the two women looked at each other in dismay. "Oh, Mrs. Richie, what can be the matter?" Nannie said.

"Just one of Elizabeth's moods. She has gone out to walk."

"At this time of night? It's after one o'clock!"

"She is probably safe and sound at the River House now."

"I wish we had one of those new telephone things," Nannie said. "Mamma was always talking about getting one. Then Blair could let us know as soon as he gets to the hotel." Nannie was plainly scared; Mrs. Richie grave and a little cold. She had had, to her amazement, a wave of tenderness for Blair; the reaction from it came in anger at Elizabeth. Elizabeth was always making trouble! "Poor Blair," she said, involuntarily. At the moment she was keenly sorry for him; after all, abominable as his conduct had been, love, of a kind, had been at the root of it. "I can forgive love," Helena Richie said to herself, "but not hate. Elizabeth never loved David or she couldn't have done what she did…. Nothing will happen to her," she said aloud. It occurred to this gentle woman that nothing ever did happen to the people one felt could be spared from this world; which wicked thought made her so shocked at herself that she hardly heard Nannie's nervous chatter: "If she hasn't come home, Blair will be back here in half an hour; it takes fifteen minutes to go to the hotel and fifteen minutes to come back. If he isn't here at a quarter to two, everything is all right."

They went into the parlor and lit the gas; Nannie suggested a fire, but Mrs. Richie said it wasn't worth while. "We'll be going up-stairs in a few minutes," she said. She was not really worried about Elizabeth; partly because of that faintly cynical belief that nothing could happen to the poor young creature who had made so much trouble for everybody; but also because she was singularly self-absorbed. Those words of Robert Ferguson's, when he kissed her in his library, had never left her mind. She thought of them now when she and Nannie sat down in that silence of waiting which seems to tingle with speech. The dim light from the gas-jet by the mantelpiece did not penetrate beyond the dividing arch of the great room; behind the grand piano sprawling sidewise between the black marble columns, all was dark. The shadow of the chandelier, muffled in its balloon of brown paper muslin, made an island of darkness on the ceiling, and the four big canvases were four black oblongs outlined in faintly glimmering gilt.

"I remember sitting here with your mother, the night you children were lost," Mrs. Richie said. "Oh, Nannie dear, you must move out of this house; it is too gloomy!" But Nannie was not thinking of the house.

"Where can she have gone?" she said.

Mrs. Richie could offer no suggestion. Her explanation to herself was that Blair and Elizabeth had quarreled, and Elizabeth, in a paroxysm of temper, had rushed off to spend the night in some hotel by herself. But she did not want to say this to Nannie. To herself she said that things did sometimes turn out for the best in this world, after all—if only David could realize it! "She would have made him dreadfully unhappy," Helena Richie thought; "she doesn't know what love means." But alas! David did not know that he had had an escape. She sighed, remembering that talk on the beach, and those wicked things he had said,—things for which she must be in some way to blame. "If he had had a different mother," she thought, heavily, "he might not have—" A sudden shock of terror jarred all through her—could Elizabeth have gone to David? The very thought turned her cold; it was as if some slimy, poisonous thing had touched her. Then common sense came in a wave of relief: "Of course not! Why should she do such an absurd thing?" But in spite of common sense, Helena Richie's lips went dry.

"It's a quarter to two," Nannie said. "He hasn't come; she must be at the hotel."

"I'm sure she is," Mrs. Richie agreed.

"Let's wait five minutes," Nannie said; "but I'm certain it's all right."

"Of course it's all right," Mrs. Richie said again, and got on her feet with a shiver of relief.

"It gave me a terrible scare," Nannie confessed, and turned out the gas. "I had a perfectly awful thought, Mrs. Richie; a wicked thought. I was afraid she had—had done something to herself. You know she is so crazy when she is angry, and—"

The front gate banged. Nannie gave a faint scream. "Oh, Mrs. Richie!
Oh—"

It was Helena Richie who opened the door before Blair had even reached it. "Well? Well?"

"Not there. . . ."