Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes
avoided.’’
Two hot red spots burned in Dorothy’s cheeks; it was the first time her cousin had ever spoken to her in that tone and the tears were very near the surface.
“Indeed, Arthur, I am very sorry,” she said penitently. “But Hilda spoke of not having been painted before, and I thought if I answered her in the same strain it was possible that she might recollect.”
Arthur frowned irritably.
“Thought!” he repeated testily. “I wish you would use a little more discretion, Dorothy. Don’t you see how bad all this is for her?”
The girl made no reply, her lips were trembling, her eyes were full of unshed tears.
Sir Arthur glanced from her to Hilda. The latter was apparently making a brave attempt to conquer her sobs.
“I shall be all right directly, thank you!” she murmured. “You must not be vexed with Miss Dorothy, it was all my own stupidity; she did not mean to hurt me.”
“I am sure she did not,” Arthur assented more calmly; his momentary annoyance with his cousin was passing, and he gave her a kindly glance. “I am very sorry it has happened. I cannot have my Elaine upset.”
This was too much for Dorothy’s equanimity. That Arthur should blame her—as she felt unjustly—was bad enough, but that Hilda should make excuses for her to him was the last straw. Forgetting that Lady Laura and Mavis were both out, and that she had promised to sit in the improvised studio until their return, she caught up her work and hurried out of the room.
Upstairs, throwing herself down by her bed, she burst into an agony of sobs. Those shy, sweet hopes, which she had hitherto hardly dared to put into words, even to herself, but which a month ago had seemed so near fruition, were now withering away. Ever since Hilda’s coming to the Manor she had fancied that there was a distinct change in Arthur’s manner; she had done her best to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that he was the same as ever, but this morning she told herself that it would be folly to deceive herself any longer.
Evidently Arthur had found out that his feeling for her was merely cousinly affection, and this beautiful stranger was absorbing his whole thoughts in a fashion which, she knew well, she had never been able to do.
There, on her knees, wrestling with her first agony of humiliation that she should have given her love unsought, Dorothy told herself that she could have borne it if she could have believed that the object of Arthur’s devotion was worthy of it—that the love itself would make for his happiness; but despite her best efforts, though she knew that Lady Laura and Mavis had succumbed to her charm, Dorothy had never been able to bring herself to like Hilda, and the utmost she could do was to resolve that no word or look of hers should reveal her feelings to others.
In the meantime, in the morning-room, Arthur was making dangerous strides in his intimacy with Hilda.
She, finding herself left alone with him, had made obvious efforts to control her agitation, and smiled resolutely through her tears into his concerned face.
“Do go on with your picture, Sir Arthur, or I shall feel that I have wasted your morning, and you will say that I am a shocking model.”
“You are so absolutely an ideal Elaine that the impossibility of doing the subject justice is almost driving me crazy,” Arthur declared, tossing his fair hair back from his forehead as he gazed despairingly at his morning’s work. Nevertheless, he went to work with feverish energy and painted away with a sort of fierce absorption for a short time.
Presently he looked up.
“That is better, I think. I am not tiring you, I hope, Miss Hilda!”
The girl twisted up her hair with a laugh as she nestled into her cushions.
“I am the most luxuriously-served of models, and one could hardly get tired of lying on this couch, but I must confess it is a relief to turn over sometimes.”
“I was a brute not to remember before,” Arthur said contritely, “but the fact is, when I am looking at you, I can think of nothing but Elaine.”
He was mixing his paints on his palette as he spoke.
Hilda looked at him in silence for a few minutes. At last she spoke in a subdued tone:
“Sir Arthur, may I ask you something?”
Sir Arthur looked up, palette knife in hand, in some surprise.
“Anything I can tell you—”
Hilda glanced round her fearfully a moment before she spoke.
“Where is Nurse Marston, Sir Arthur?”
The young man started; he hesitated a moment before replying, for he knew that the mystery attaching to Nurse Marston’s curious departure from the Manor had been hitherto kept from her patient, but it seemed to him, looking at the girl’s agitated face, that some hint of the circumstances must have reached her, and he deliberated as to whether it might not now be more expedient to speak out.
Hilda’s eyes were fixed upon his wavering face, as if they would wring the secret from him.
“Where is Nurse Marston?” she reiterated. “Where did she go when she left the Manor? ‘‘
“I do not know,’’ Sir Arthur said slowly at last. “I wish I did,’’ he added.
Hilda pushed back the heavy mass of hair from her white forehead.
“What do you mean?” she asked, bewildered. “Do you know why she left?”
“What has made you ask me?” he inquired.
The girl’s face was noticeably paler, her blue eyes looked strained and terrified.
“When I was lying only partially conscious, I caught words and phrases which, disconnected as they were, made me fancy later on when I was better, and could put things together, that there was something strange—some story about her. Then yesterday Minnie was helping me to dress—Mavis is so kind, she always sends her—and I asked how it was that Nurse Marston went away so suddenly. She turned absolutely ashen white as soon as I mentioned the name and began to tremble all over. Then when I persisted she burst into tears and I could extract nothing from her.’’
“Minnie’s behaviour has been to me one of the queerest things about the whole affair,’’ Sir Arthur acknowledged. “I cannot for the life of me see how it concerns her. Yet she goes about looking like a ghost and seems to be terrified at the mention of Nurse Marston’s name.’’
“You have not answered my question—what has become of Nurse Marston?” Hilda reminded him. “You must tell me all, please, Sir Arthur.”
“All is not much,” the young man responded. “When Nurse Marston left your room on the night of the 6th of last month it was ostensibly to go to an interview with my mother in the small library.”
“Well?” Hilda said breathlessly, a queer look coming over her face.
Sir Arthur rose.
“You are faint,” he said concernedly. “You must have some wine or something. I will ring—”
Hilda put out her hands and stopped him.
“No, no,” she whispered fearfully. “It is not that; don’t you see that it is the dread of what I am going to hear? Tell me the worst, please, Sir Arthur, at once. Nothing could be more terrible than some of the fancies I have had. Did she die?”
“Die? No,” the young man said reassuringly. “Nurse Marston is alive and well, I firmly believe, Miss Hilda. The only thing is that she did not keep an appointment she had made with my mother that night, and we none of us can make out where she did go. In fact I suppose for some reasons of her own she disappeared.”
“She disappeared!” Hilda breathed slowly, her very lips looking stiff and white. “Do you mean that she was not in the house—that