Page:The Trimmed Lamp (1907).djvu/35

 arrived. There was a queer, strained look on his face.

“I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her,” he said.

“Heard from who?” asked ‘Nancy. “Isn’t Lou there?”

“I thought you knew,” said Dan. “She hasn’t been here or at the house where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from there. She told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going to Europe.”

“Hasn’t anybody seen her anywhere?” asked Nancy.

Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in his steady gray eyes.

“They told me in the laundry,” he said, harshly, “that they saw her pass yesterday—in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I suppose, that you and Lou were forever busying your brains about.”

For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand that trembled slightly on Dan’s sleeve.

“You’ve no right to say such a thing to me Dan—as if I had anything to do with it!”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Dan, softening. He fumbled in his vest pocket.

“I’ve got the tickets for the show to-night,” he said, with a gallant show of lightness. “If you—”

Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it.