No one had, for he had kept out of their way. The few who called at the mansion--Mr. Colton, Captain Ben Snow, and others who had a claim to close acquaintanceship--were told by the maid or Nabby Gifford that he was busy with “law papers” and could not see anybody. Reliance Clark was the next best bet and they hurried to the post office. Reliance was quite willing to talk, up to a certain point. Yes, it was true. Esther Townsend was now Mrs. Robert Griffin. They had been married in her sitting-room by the Baptist minister and she was present at the wedding. Why the haste? Was it true that they had run off? Did Foster Townsend know of it before it happened? Where were they now? All these queries she parried or answered non-committally. To too-persistent questioners, of a certain type, she replied in another fashion. “If you are so terribly anxious to know how Cap’n Townsend takes it,” she observed, “why don’t you go and ask him? Bob and Esther are married. That much I do know. And you can advertise it to all creation.” This was so far the greatest sensation of a sensational season. Following so closely upon the accident to Seymour Covell it drove even that and its trail of gossip and surmise from the public mind. The whisperings concerning Bob Griffin’s part in that accident, or his responsibility for it, were forgotten. Covell, in the Boston hospital, was reported to have regained consciousness and to be on the road to recovery. The question of what he was doing on the lower road--of who saw him and Griffin there, if indeed any one saw them--ceased to be debated. Carrie Campton and her parents began to breathe more easily. So did Millard Clark, although breathing was practically the only luxury his sister permitted him to indulge in just then. Millard’s position was hard indeed. To be an inmate of the very house in which the amazing marriage had taken place, to be as wildly excited concerning it as every one else, and to be ordered to hush, or be still, or to mind his own business whenever he dared venture to hint a request for inside information, was torture indeed for Mr. Clark. And, worst of all, his orders--orders which, in fear of Foster Townsend and his sister, he did not dare disobey--were to say that he knew nothing and keep on saying it. “It is the truth,” declared Reliance. “You don’t know anything and, so far as I am concerned, you never will. And, if my shoulder was as lame as yours is, I don’t think I should run the risk of doin’ anything likely to bring Cap’n Foster down on me again. He might break your neck next time.”