She looked round her with a smile. "Why, Katty," she exclaimed, "how charming and pretty you've made it all! You've added quite a number of things since I was here last." "Only the curtains," said Katty quickly (oh, how relieved she felt!), "only the curtains, and perhaps that arm-chair, Laura." "Yes, I suppose that _is_ all, but somehow it looks more." Laura looked exactly as she always looked, rather paler perhaps than usual, but then Laura was pale. She had that peculiar clear, warm whiteness of skin that is compared by its admirers to a camellia; this morning, her lovely, deep blue eyes looked tired, as if she had been sleeping badly. "I've really come to ask if you know where Godfrey is? We expected him home on Thursday. Then he sent a telephone message saying that he couldn't be back till yesterday. No time was mentioned, but as he had a lot of appointments at the Bank we of course thought he would be back early. I myself sat up for him last night till after the last train, but now, this morning, I've heard nothing from him--and Mr. Privet has heard nothing." "What an odd thing!" exclaimed Katty. She really did think it very odd, for Godfrey was the most precise of men. She waited a moment, then said truthfully, "No, I haven't the slightest idea where he is. He wrote me a line late last week about a little investment of mine. I've got the letter somewhere." Katty was trying to make up her mind as to whether she should say anything concerning that joint journey to York. At last she decided not to do so. It had nothing to do with Godfrey's absence now. "Doesn't Mr. Privet know where he is?" she asked. "That really _is_ very odd, Laura." "Of course Mr. Privet knows where Godfrey was up to Thursday morning. He stayed where he always does stay when in London, at the Hungerford Hotel, in Trafalgar Square. He's always stayed there--they know him, and make him very comfortable. But Mr. Privet telephoned through there yesterday--as a matter of fact I've only just heard this--and they told him that Godfrey had left the hotel on Thursday morning. But the extraordinary thing is," and now Laura really did look somewhat troubled--"that they were expecting him back there to pack, to leave for here--at least so the manager understood him to say. He went out in the morning, and then he didn't come back, as they thought he would do, to luncheon. All his things are still at the Hungerford Hotel." Katty began to feel a little uneasy. "Perhaps he's had an accident," she said. "After all, accidents _do_ happen. Have you done anything, Laura?"