“If—­if he hasn’t been hurt.  Oh, Mr. Derby, they may have fought.  It would be just like them.  It may be dreadfully serious.  You don’t know as much about men as I do.  They’re terribly—–­”

“Please don’t worry, Miss Thursdale,” he said, smiling in recollection of his football days.  “You’ll find there’s been nothing bloody about all this.  The delay is vexatious, but only temporary, I’m sure.”

“I’ll marry Joe Dauntless now if it has to be delayed a hundred years,” she cried, her eyes flashing.

During the next half-hour poor Derby ran errands, carried messages and complaints to every one of the train men, finally administering smelling salts when it occurred to Eleanor that Joe might have fallen off the train during the night.

In the meantime Anne Courtenay was having a sad half-hour of it.  She had no one to turn to, no one to think it all out for her; she was alone and in great despair.  The porter had failed to find the tall Englishman; the conductor had been equally unsuccessful; she herself had searched in vain.  His trunks and hers were in the baggage car, she found, but there was no sign of the man himself.  She was a self-reliant, sensible young woman, accustomed to the rigours of the world, but this was quite too overwhelming.  The presence on the train of the girl that she had, to all intents and purposes, cruelly deceived, did not add to her comfort.  As a matter of fact, she was quite fond of Eleanor; they were warm friends despite the vagaries of love.  Miss Courtenay, among other things, began to wonder, as she sat in her tumbled berth, if retribution had more to do with this than chance.

“Could he have fallen off the train?” she wondered, with a sudden chill of apprehension.  The next instant she was calling to the porter.  “Send the conductor to me at once.  My friend has fallen off the train--out of his window, perhaps.  I am quite sure of it.  I want an engine to go back and look for him.  Hurry, please! don’t stand there grinning.”

The Pullman conductor came up at that moment.

“Are you the young lady who was asking for Mr. Dauntless?” he asked.

“Dauntless?” she murmured.  “No, I’m asking for an engine.  Have you—­”

“There’s another young lady asking for an engine, too, madam.  It’s impossible.”

“Am I to understand that I shall have to walk?—­Oh,” with a sudden start, “is—­is there a Mr. Dauntless missing too?”

“Seems so.  He’s gone.”

Anne dropped the curtains in his face, and then stared at them for a long time.  Gradually she began to comprehend.  A panic of fear came over her.

“They have met somewhere and quarrelled!  Mr. Dauntless was jealous—­ terribly so.  He may have—­good Heavens!—­he may have killed him in the mistaken idea that Harry was running away with Eleanor.  She’s on this very train!  It’s perfectly natural.  Porter,” she called, “there has been foul play!”