Laura, when she came and talked, as she sometimes did talk, kindly, if a little indifferently, to her husband's confidential clerk, would have been disagreeably surprised had she been able to see into Mr. Privet's heart and mind. As for Godfrey Pavely, nothing would have made him credit, high as was his opinion of Mr. Privet's business acumen, the fact that his clerk had a very shrewd suspicion where those three hundred pounds in notes, lately drawn out by his employer for his own personal use, had made their way.... CHAPTER XVI It was the morning of the 15th of January, and already Godfrey Pavely's disappearance had excited more than the proverbial nine days' wonder. Laura had gone to her boudoir after breakfast, and she was waiting there, sitting at her writing-table, feeling wretchedly anxious and excited, for all last night she had had a curious, insistent presentiment that at last something was going to happen. She had sent Alice off to her lessons, for there was no object in allowing the child to idle as she had idled during that first bewildering week. At last she got up, pushed her chair aside, and went and lay down on a sofa. She felt very, very tired; worn out partly by suspense and anxiety, partly by the many interviews with strangers she had been compelled to have during the last ten days. Oliver Tropenell was again in London, and since he had left Freshley, for the second time, it was as though a strong, protecting arm on which she leant had suddenly been withdrawn from her. And yet she knew that he was engaged upon her business, upon this extraordinary, unutterably strange business of her husband's disappearance. Oliver wrote to her daily--brief, coldly-worded notes describing what had been, and was being, done both by the police and by the big firm of private detectives who were now also engaged in a search for the missing man. But there was very little to report--so far every one was completely baffled. Against the wish and advice of both Oliver Tropenell and the Scotland Yard authorities, Laura had offered a reward of a thousand pounds for any information which would lead to the discovery of Godfrey Pavely, alive or dead. It had been Katty's suggestion, and Laura, somehow, had not liked to disregard it. But now, to-day, Laura, as she moved restlessly this way and that, told herself that she was sorry she had assented to a suggestion that Katty Winslow should come and stay with her during those long days of waiting which were at once so dreary and so full of excitement and suspense. Katty had got hopelessly on Laura's nerves. Katty could not keep silent, Katty could not keep still.