“I have come for Miss Ewing, her uncle—­” James began, but Annie interrupted him, her face paling perceptibly.  “Clemency,” she said; “why, she left here directly after lunch.  She said she must go.  She felt anxious about her mother, and did not want to leave her any longer.  Hasn’t she come home yet?”

“No,” said James.

“And you didn’t meet her?  You must have met her.”

“No.”

The two stood staring at each other.  A delicate old face peeped out of the door at the right of the halls.  It was like Annie’s, only dimmed by age, and shaded by two leaf-like folds of gray hair as smooth as silver.  “Oh, mother, Clemency has not got home!” Annie cried.  “Dr. Elliot, this is my mother.  Mother, Clemency has not got home.  What do you think has happened?”

The lady came out in the hall.  She had a quiet serenity of manner, but her soft eyes looked anxious.  “Could she have stopped anywhere, dear?” she said.

“You know, mother, there is not a single house between here and her own where Clemency ever stops,” said Annie.  She was trembling all over.

James made a movement to go.  “What are you going to do?” cried Annie.

“Stop at every house between here and Doctor Gordon’s, and ask if the people have seen her,” replied James.

Then he ran back to the buggy, and heard as he went a little nervous call from Annie, “Oh, let us know if—­”

“I will let you know when I find her, Miss Lipton,” he called back as he gathered up the lines.  He kept his word.  He did stop at every house, and at every one all knowledge of the girl was disclaimed.  There were not many houses, the road being a lonely one.  He was met mostly by women who seemed at once to share his anxiety.  One woman especially asked very carefully for a description of Clemency, and he gave a minute one.  “You say her mother is ill, too,” said the woman.  She was elderly, but still pretty.  She had kept her tints of youth as some withered flowers do, and there seemed still to cling to her the atmosphere of youth, as fragrance clings to dry rose leaves.  She was dressed in rather a superior fashion to most of the countrywomen, in soft lavender cashmere which fitted her slight, tall figure admirably.  James had a glimpse behind her of a pretty interior:  a room with windows full of blooming plants, of easy-chairs and many cushioned sofas, beside book-cases.  The woman looked, so he thought, like one who had some private anxiety of her own.  She kept peering up and down the road, as they talked, as though she, too, were on the watch for some one.  She promised James to keep a lookout for the missing girl.  “Poor little thing,” she murmured.  There was something in her face as she said that, a slight phase of amusement, which caused James to stare keenly at her, but it had passed, and her whole face denoted the utmost candor and concern.

When James reached home he had a forlorn hope that he should find Clemency there; that from a spirit of mischief she had taken some cross track over the fields to elude him.  But when Aaron met him in the drive, and he saw the man’s frightened stare, he knew that she had not come.  It was unnecessary to ask, but ask he did.  “She has not come?”