“She may have gone abroad.”
“That wouldn’t stop her writing. She always wrote when she was with the Dartreys, and she said she was going to write. Peter, don’t you see that there must be something wrong?”
“Well, I don’t see what you can do about it. You put that silly advertisement in the Times, and nothing came of it.”
“And why was it silly?”
“Asking for trouble,” said Peter briefly. “You don’t know when you are well off. Take my advice and leave well alone.”
Thomasina’s colour deepened.
“I wouldn’t mind leaving it alone if I knew that it was well. But suppose it isn’t. Suppose-” She stopped because she didn’t want to go on. It was like coming to a corner and being afraid of what you might find if you went any farther. The colour drained away.
Peter said stubbornly,
“Well, I don’t see what you can do.”
“I can go to the police,” said Thomasina.
CHAPTER III
It was about a week later that Detective Inspector Abbott was taking tea with Miss Maud Silver, whom he regarded with a good deal of the fondness of a nephew together with a respect not always accorded to the spinster aunt. Spinster Miss Silver certainly was and had never desired to be otherwise. With a most indulgent heart towards young lovers, and a proper regard for the holy estate of matrimony, she never regretted her own independent position. Aunt to Frank Abbott she was not, but the tie between them was a strong one. His irreverent sense of humour was continually delighted by her idiosyncrasies, the primness of her appearance, her fringe, her beaded slippers, her quotations from Lord Tennyson, the rapid play of the knitting-needles in her small competent hands, her moral maxims, and the inflexibility of her principles. But with and behind all this there was an affection, an admiration, and a respect very rarely displayed but always there to be reckoned with. From their first encounter down to this present day these feelings had continued to increase and to be the source, as he once informed her, of both pleasure and profit.