"I feared you had deserted me," she said, holding out her hand to him
as he strode across the room. S he did not rise from the chair in
which she was seated by the window. The lower wings of the old-
fashioned shutters were closed except for a narrow strip; light
streamed down upon her wavy golden hair from the upper half of the
casement. She was attired in a gorgeously flowered dressing-gown; he
had seen it once before, draping the matutinal figure of Miss
Thackeray as she glided through the hall with a breakfast tray which
Miss Tilly had flatly refused to carry to her room: being no servant,
she declared with heat.
"I saw no occasion to disturb your rest," he mumbled. "Nothing--
nothing new has turned up."
"I have been peeping," she said, looking at him searchingly. A little
line of anxiety lay between her eyes. "Where is Mr. Loeb going, Mr.
Barnes?"
He noted the omission of Mr. O'Dowd. "To Hornville, I believe. They
stopped for gasoline."
"Is he running away?" was her disconcerting question.
"O'Dowd says he is to be gone for a few days on business," he
equivocated.
"He will not return," she said quietly. "He is a coward at heart. Oh,
I know him well," she went on, scorn in her voice.
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