“Mrs. Jackson has been here” (it was at Mrs. Jackson’s house that Mr. Dunster lodged), “wanting to know if we could tell her where Mr. Dunster was, for he never came home last night at all.  And you were in the drawing-room with—­who did you say he was?—­that Mr. Livingstone, who might have come at a better time to bid good-bye; and he had never dined here, had he? so I don’t see any reason he had to come calling, and P. P. C.-ing, and your papa not up.  So I said to Mrs. Jackson, ’I’ll send and ask Mr. Wilkins, if you like, but I don’t see any use in it, for I can tell you just as well as anybody, that Mr. Dunster is not in this house, wherever he may be.’  Yet nothing would satisfy her but that some one must go and waken up your papa, and ask if he could tell where Mr. Dunster was.”

“And did papa?” inquired Ellinor, her dry throat huskily forming the inquiry that seemed to be expected from her.

“No! to be sure not.  How should Mr. Wilkins know?  As I said to Mrs. Jackson, ’Mr. Wilkins is not likely to know where Mr. Dunster spends his time when he is not in the office, for they do not move in the same rank of life, my good woman; and Mrs. Jackson apologised, but said that yesterday they had both been dining at Mr. Hodgson’s together, she believed; and somehow she had got it into her head that Mr. Dunster might have missed his way in coming along Moor Lane, and might have slipped into the canal; so she just thought she would step up and ask Mr. Wilkins if they had left Mr. Hodgson’s together, or if your papa had driven home.  I asked her why she had not told me all these particulars before, for I could have asked your papa myself all about when he last saw Mr. Dunster; and I went up to ask him a second time, but he did not like it at all, for he was busy dressing, and I had to shout my questions through the door, and he could not always hear me at first.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh! he had walked part of the way with Mr. Dunster, and then cut across by the short path through the fields, as far as I could understand him through the door.  He seemed very much annoyed to hear that Mr. Dunster had not been at home all night; but he said I was to tell Mrs. Jackson that he would go to the office as soon as he had had his breakfast, which he ordered to be sent up directly into his own room, and he had no doubt it would all turn out right, but that she had better go home at once.  And, as I told her, she might find Mr. Dunster there by the time she got there.  There, there is your I papa going out!  He has not lost any time over his breakfast!”

Ellinor had taken up the Hamley Examiner, a daily paper, which lay on the table, to hide her face in the first instance; but it served a second purpose, as she glanced languidly over the columns of the advertisements.

“Oh! here are Colonel Macdonald’s orchideous plants to be sold.  All the stock of hothouse and stove plants at Hartwell Priory.  I must send James over to Hartwell to attend the sale.  It is to last for three days.”