"What's the matter with the girl I can't think; I never saw anything like the change that's come over her the last few days; she looks more fit for a hospital than anything else--and her temper! She never says anything to me; I suppose you don't know what's wrong?" "Mrs. Joyce, I'm not your daughter's confidant; she certainly says nothing to me in the sense you mean. Why do you take it for granted that anything's wrong?" "Because I've got two eyes in my head, that's why. She's not the same girl she was; that something's wrong I'm certain sure; but she snaps my nose off directly I open my mouth. I know she thinks a lot of you. I wondered if she'd said anything to you." "Absolutely nothing." "Then I can't understand the girl, and that's flat!" With that somewhat cryptic utterance Mrs. Joyce went out of the room as impetuously as she had entered. Rodney stood looking at the door for a moment or two, as if in doubt whether she would return. He tore the sheet of paper on which were the two typewritten lines into tiny scraps and dropped them into the fireplace. Re-reading Miss Carmichael's epistle, he obeyed her injunctions, a little tardily, perhaps, and sent the fragments after the others, repeating to himself as he did so a line from an old song: "Of all the girls that are so sweet!" Then he took an oblong piece of paper out of a letter-case and studied it. "'Steamship _Cedric_.--John Griffiths, passenger to New York, cabin forty-five, berth A.' I wonder if it will be occupied, or if the money's wasted. That's for to-morrow, or is it to be Buenos Ayres on Friday, or New York on Saturday?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows if it is to be either?" He had left the house and was descending the steps when a telegraph boy approached, with a yellow envelope in his hand. "Who's it for?" he asked. "Rodney Elmore, sir." "I am Rodney Elmore. Wait and see if there's an answer." The telegram which the envelope contained was a lengthy one; it covered the whole of the pink slip of paper. He read it through once, then again. As he read it the second time he whistled, very softly, as if unconsciously, the opening bars of "Sally in Our Alley." "There is an answer. Give me a form." He spread the form the boy gave him out upon his letter-case, then he seemed to consider what to say; then read the telegram he had received a third time, as if in search of light and leading. Arriving at a sudden decision, he wrote on the form the name and address of the person to whom the message was to be sent, and then one word, "Right." He added nothing which would show who the sender was; evidently he took it for granted that it would be recognised that the message came from him. As he watched the lad mount his bicycle and pedal away, he said to himself, always with that characteristic air of his, as of one who appreciates a capital jest: "That settles it! Now the plot does begin to thicken." CHAPTER XXI