Lady Naselton piloted me across the room towards the Romneys, with her arm linked in mine. “We must make a few allowances, my dear,” she whispered, confidentially. “One cannot have everything nowadays. He is really not so bad, and the money is quite safe. In diamonds, or something, Fred says. It is quite a million.” I glanced back to him as I stood talking with the Romneys. He was sitting quietly where I had left him, watching me covertly. His black eyebrows were drawn together, and a certain look of anxiety seemed to have sharpened his sallow features. His eyes fell at once before mine. I felt that I would have given everything I possessed in the world to have known who he was. CHAPTER VII A FRUITLESS APPEAL Friday passed without any sign of my father’s return, and when on Saturday morning we found no letter from him upon the breakfast table, the vague disquiet of the day before assumed a definite shape. We looked into one another’s faces, and we were seriously alarmed. “We shall be sure to hear from him in an hour or two,” Alice said, holding her cup to her lips with shaking hands. “He must have missed the post. We shall have a telegram.” “I hope so,” I answered, fervently. “Nothing can have happened to him, of course. It is absurd to feel nervous. But it is too bad of him. He ought to have written. However busy he is, he could have found a minute or two.” “I will never let him go away again without leaving us an address of some sort,” Alice declared. “No doubt he will telegraph soon. Still, one cannot help feeling uneasy.” But no telegram arrived. Luncheon time came and passed without a word. The afternoon dragged on. The last train from London was due at the nearest railway station--three miles away--at six o’clock. At eight o’clock he had not returned. More than an hour ago a fly with luggage from the train had passed our gate and gone on to the Yellow House. Alice was as white as a sheet, and commenced to cry softly to herself. “There is a service to-morrow morning, and no one to help,” she moaned. “He must be very ill. What had we better do, Kate?”