“You’ve clouded visions and waked her from sweet dreaming.  She’s been seeing herself in the Thorne house as the mother of its mistress.  I don’t mean to laugh, indeed I don’t, but—­” I did laugh.  Mrs. Swink and Selwyn dwelling under the same roof was a picture beyond the resistance of laughter.  Incompatibility and incongruity would be feeble terms with which to designate such a situation, and at its suggestion seriousness was impossible.  That is, to me.  In Selwyn’s face was no smiling.

“If there have been any little dreams I’m glad she wrote me.  In reply I had a chance to say what there has been no chance to say before.  Were there imaginings that Harrie was to bring his wife to his old home they will cease when she gets my note.  No house is big enough for a bride and groom and members of either family, and certainly mine isn’t.  I limited comment on Harrie to his financial condition; expressed regret at my inability to explain his failure to keep his engagement, and gave her no hint of my uneasiness.  Only to you have I given it.  Something is wrong.  I’m afraid the boy is ill somewhere.  The thing has gotten on my nerves.  I’ve got to do something.  I can’t go on this way.”

With eyes in which nervous uneasiness was unrestrained, Selwyn looked at me, asking unconsciously for help I could not give, and for a moment I said nothing.  Possibilities of which I could not speak were clutching at my heart and making me cold with fear and horror, for suddenly something I had overheard a girl telling Mrs. Mundy a few days before, as I passed through the hall, came to me with cruel and compelling clearness.  “He’s a gentleman, all right.  Drunk or sober, you can tell that.  She ain’t left him day or night since he was taken sick, and except the doctor she won’t let any one come in the room.”

The words of the girl talking to Mrs. Mundy repeated themselves with such distinctness that it seemed Selwyn would hear the thick beating of my heart and understand its wonder as to who the man was who was ill, who the girl who was nursing him.  Did Mrs. Mundy know?  Lest he notice that I, too, was nervous I got up and went over to a table in an opposite corner of the room and drank a glass of water.  Coming back, I took my seat, but Selwyn remained standing, and, taking out his watch again, looked at it.

“I must go.  Had I known you were to have a party”—­he smiled faintly—­“I should not have come.  You are too tired to stay up longer.  Forget what I’ve told you and go to sleep.  If tomorrow you can suggest anything—­ I’m pretty ragged and don’t seem able to think clearly.  You are keener than I in grasping situations, and quicker in making decisions.  Whatever you think might be done—­” Again his teeth came down upon his lips, and, looking up, I saw his face was white.

“Give me a day or two in which to see what can be done.  And you won’t mind if I ask Mr. Crimm’s advice?” I seemed pushing the girl I’d heard talking to Mrs. Mundy behind me.  “He hasn’t been able to find Etta Blake yet.  Do you suppose her disappearance could have any connection with Harrie’s?  It may be he really loves her.”