“No, I shall dine as I am,” the Earl replied, “so will Mr. Lansdown.”
When the butler had left the room, the Earl said,
“Where else can we look? I think yesterday and today we must have covered the whole of the estate.”
“You still don’t think that she has run away?”
“In only what she stood up in? No!”
“We have discussed all this before,” Peter Lansdown said. “She was definitely not unhappy. She seemed amused at everything we said at dinner that night and there was no way of her leaving the house except on foot.”
The Earl drank some of his brandy before he said,
“You will laugh at me, but I have a feeling that something terrible – almost evil – has happened. I cannot explain it, but all the time it’s there in my mind.”
Peter Lansdown looked at him in surprise.
“What could it be?” h
