"I'm sorry if I startled you, Lydia," he said in a perfunctory tone,
"but this is a serious business. MacPherson tells me Stoddard hasn't
been at the factory nor at his boarding-house to-day. The last person
who saw him, so far as we know, is his stable boy. Black Jim says
Stoddard rode out of the gate at five o'clock this morning, bareheaded
and in his riding clothes. Have any of you seen him since--that's what I
want to know?"
"Since?" repeated Miss Sessions, who seemed unable to get beyond the
parrot echoing of her questioner's words. "Why Jerome, what makes you
think I've seen him since then? Did he say--did anybody tell you--"
She broke off huskily and sat staring at her interlaced fingers dropped
in her lap.
"No--no. Of course not, Lydia," her sister hastened to reassure her,
crossing the room and putting a protecting arm about the girl's
shoulders. "He shouldn't have spoken as he did, knowing that you and
Gray--knowing how affairs stand."
"Well, I only thought since you and Stoddard are such great friends,"
Hardwick persisted, "he might have mentioned to you some excursion, or
made opportunity to talk with you alone, sometime last night--to--to
say something. Did he tell you where he was going, Lydia? Are you
keeping something from us that we ought to know? Remember this is no
child's play. It begins to look as though it might be a question of the
man's life.
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