Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/187

 a bit of the way home with her, for it was raining, and he came in very wet, looking more furious than ever. Whether with her or not, who can say? I never saw the girl again. And it wasn't many days after that, the butcher's boy, trying to get up a conversation, mentioned that the young woman had vanished, and there was a great to-do up at the big house. Now, you tell me Mr. Barr's disappeared, too."

"He seems to be making himself a bit scarce," facetiously replied the detective. "The story at Riding St. Mary was that he'd been seen on the day of Lady Hereward's murder, not far from the woods where she was killed; but the odd thing is, we can't find out where the story started; and, of course, it may or may not be true. Wherever he is, though, Mr. Barr must know he's wanted, and why. Don't you think that looks a little queer for him? If he has nothing to hide, and no reason to keep out of the way, why doesn't he turn up, or send word where he is? Don't you, as a straightforward woman, feel that?"

"Perhaps," said Miss Maunsell, non-committally. "But Mr. Barr was a queer young man."

"Do you think he was in love with that French maid of Lady Hereward's?"

Miss Maunsell tossed her prim gray head, and replied stiffly that she knew nothing about such things. But the girl, in her opinion, was a designing minx. She had the look of it—and being that pleased with