Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/325

Rh anything in the world, that Beatrice had not returned.

Maybe she had slipped in at the rear and gone quietly to her own room? Yes, maybe. But he did not believe it. It was not like Beatrice; she was not the one to run away like that. He began to be uneasy, to fear for her. She had been last with Embry, and Embry of all men in the world he distrusted the most. And where was Embry?

He, too, might have gone home. But where was the sense of it all?

The servants were putting out the lights. Bradford came and went in his quiet way, seeing that doors were closed and locked. The big house was slowly surrendering to the utter blackness of the night. Only here and there were thin lines of light about the edges of drawn window shades where tired guests were hastening to bed. Steele turned and went slowly for his horse. Obviously there was no need, no reason in his lingering here longer.

His heart was troubled with vague dread for Beatrice. As he rode toward his cabin at the Goblet he turned over and over in his thoughts the many explanations which had offered themselves. In turn each one was abandoned as unconvincing and insufficient. And, with every yard flung behind him, his fear for Beatrice grew. He told himself that he was suddenly grown fanciful, that in sober truth his paraphrase of the other day had been truer than he knew, that his love was making a coward of him. But for all that his anxiety was not dispelled.

Suddenly when some two or three miles from the