Then, one night at dinner, a telegram was brought in, and she knew it
was the expected word. She felt her mother's eyes on her, and she sat
very still with her hands clenched in her lap. But her father did not
read it at the table; he got up and went out, and some time later he
came to the door. The telegram was not in sight.
"That was from Harrison Miller," he said. "He has traced Dick to a hotel
at Norada, but he had left the hotel, and he hasn't got in touch with
him yet."
He went away then, and they heard the house door close.
Then, some days later, she learned that Harrison Miller was coming home,
and that David was being brought back. She saw that telegram from Mr.
Miller, and read into it failure and discouragement, and something more
ominous than either.
"Reach home Tuesday night. Nothing definite. Think safe."
"Think safe?" she asked, breathlessly. "Then he has been in danger? What
are you keeping from me?" And when no one spoke: "Oh, don't you see how
cruel it is? You are all trying to protect me, and you are killing me
instead."
"Not danger," her father said, slowly. "So far as we know, he is well.
Is all right." And seeing her face: "It is nothing that affects his
feeling for you, dear. He is thinking of you and loving you, wherever he
is. Only, we don't know where he is."
But when he came back on Tuesday, after seeing Harrison Miller, he was
discouraged and sick at heart. He went directly upstairs to his wife,
and shut the bedroom door.
"Not a trace," he said, in reply to the question in her eyes. "The
situation is as he outlined it in the letter. He elaborated, of course.
The fact is, and David will have to see it, that that statement of his
doesn't help at all, unless he can prove there is a Clifton Hines. And
even then it's all supposition. There's a strong sentiment out there
that Dick either killed himself or met with an accident and died in the
mountains. The horse wandered into town last week. I'll have to tell
her."
Over this possibility they faced each other, a tragic middle-aged pair,
helpless as is the way of middle-age before the attacks of life on their
young.
"It will kill her, Walter."
"She's young," he said sturdily. "She'll get over it."