Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes
was a silence. Mavis’s eyes were fixed on the other girl’s downcast face.
At last Hilda raised her head.
“Didn’t you hear me just now—didn’t I tell you that I knew she had come to show us where she was buried?” she said, her teeth chattering. “I—I am sure she did, Mavis.”
Mavis’s clear eyes looked searchingly at Hilda’s.
“Was that what you meant, then? It seemed to me—”
“Certainly it was what I meant!” Hilda said pettishly. “Really, Mavis—”
The door opened and Lady Laura came in looking excited. Hilda turned to her with an unusual air of relief, and Mavis said no more; but for the first time, glancing at the fair face before her, a faint distrust of her future sister-in-law crept into the mind.
Lady Laura carried an open letter in her hand.
“Oh, my dears, such news! But Hilda, what is the matter?” The traces of the girl’s emotion were still plainly to be seen on her face. “Have you heard—”
“Oh, Lady Laura, we have seen Nurse Marston in the shrubbery—Mavis and I!” Hilda burst out, disregarding Mavis’s signal to her to be silent.
Lady Laura stared at her.
“My dear child, what do you mean?”
Hilda poured forth the whole story, much to Mavis’s vexation; the girl was anxious that as much as possible the affair should be kept from her mother and Dorothy. It was useless attempting to stop Hilda, however, and she could only keep her closely to the facts.
To her daughter’s relief Lady Laura did not seem inclined to take the matter seriously.
“You must have imagined the whole thing, both of you,” she said decidedly, “and I am not altogether surprised. Very often when I am thinking of the affair it gets on my nerves until I am sure I could fancy anything.”
“Arthur thinks it is Nurse Marston herself—that she is doing it for a trick,” Mavis said doubtfully.
Lady Laura laughed.
“Oh, my dear Mavis, how absurd! Do you, or does Arthur imagine that a sensible woman like Nurse Marston would wish to play a silly trick of that kind? I should advise you to put the whole thing out of your heads, all of you, and also to give up wandering about outside the house when it is getting dusk. You know how I dislike the idea of it for you, Mavis. I am sure it is positively unsafe. One does not know what suspicious characters may be about. I expect if poor Nurse Marston had been content to stay indoors she would have been safe enough. Now we will say no more about that,” as Hilda, who had been growing more composed, began to tremble. “You have not asked me about my news.”
“No, I think we were far too excited about our own adventure,” said Mavis. “What is the news? Something pleasant this time, I hope.”
Lady Laura held up her letter.
“This is from some one who thinks Hilda is her daughter!”
“What?” With a cry the girl sprang to her feet. “Oh, Lady Laura, is it true, is it true? Let me see the letter!”
Lady Laura kept it in her own hands.
“It is from a Mrs. Leparge. Do you recognize the name, my dear?”
Hilda’s demonstration ceased.
“I don’t think so. Is—is it mine, Lady Laura?”
“I think that very probably it is. Mrs. Leparge writes that her daughter, whose name was Hilda Frances, has disappeared from the school where she was a parlour- boarder. Mrs. Leparge has been away from the country, travelling in New Zealand, and the schoolmistress seems to have decided in her own mind that it was a case of elopement. However, on her return to this country Mrs. Leparge was not inclined to accept this theory, and put the matter into the hands of a private inquiry agent; he naturally had heard of our search for Hilda’s friends, and thought that probably Mrs. Leparge would turn out to be her mother.”
Hilda sank into a settee and buried her face in her hands.
“Oh, is she, is she?” she said as she sobbed.
Lady Laura laid her hand on her shoulder.
“Try to calm yourself, my dear. We shall soon know, for Mrs. Leparge writes that, too impatient to wait, she is following her letter, and will call upon us to-morrow, in the expectation of finding her daughter. I hope sincerely, for your sake, my child, that she may do so.”
“Oh, I hope so! I hope so!” Hilda’s voice was choked by her tears.
Lady Laura, her resentful feelings of the last few weeks momentarily forgotten in her pity, bent over her.
“There is Arthur!” Mavis exclaimed as she heard the front door open and her brother’s voice in the hall.
She hurried out.
“Any news, Arthur, did you find her?”
He was looking moody and distrait as he handed his hat and coat to Jenkins.
“There is not a vestige of anybody to be seen about the place. We have been up and down, inside and out, all over the shrubbery, and we are at least pretty certain of one thing—there is nobody there now.”
“Still, you were a long time before you started,” Mavis said doubtfully, “and it seems to me that she would have had plenty of time to get away before you began your search.”
“If she was ever there,” Arthur said sceptically. He was feeling cross and tired; his unsuccessful search and the loss of his chat with Hilda, to which he had been looking forward, had made him irritable. “I expect you had been frightening Hilda and yourself by talking about Nurse Marston until you both fancied you saw her. I only hope you won’t let your imagination run away with you in this fashion often, or we shall not be able to get a servant to stay in the place.”
Mavis coloured a little. It was so seldom Arthur had spoken to her in that tone.
“There was no fancy about it, Arthur. I was not thinking of Nurse Marston—I had not mentioned her for days—when Hilda called out and I saw her on the path.”
Her manner impressed her brother. He turned back with his hand on the drawing-room door.
“You really believe she was there?”
“I saw her as plainly as I see you now, except that she was farther away,” Mavis said impressively. “She was there, Arthur—and I do not believe in ghosts.”
“Ghosts! No.” Arthur said impatiently, though his manner was softened. “Well, if that is so, Mavis, we must find her. What on earth her motive can be for dodging about the house like this I can’t think, unless she is out of her mind.”
“I think she must be,” Mavis conceded, as he opened the door.
Chapter XV
“Ah, If I only knew! It may be that it is my own mother coming to see me, and I, her daughter, know nothing about it!”
“Well, it will soon be settled one way or the other,” remarked Mavis prosaically. “Mrs. Leparge said she would be here early in the morning, and it is nearly eleven now.”
Hilda turned and caught her hands.
“Suppose she is not a nice woman, Mavis? suppose she should say that I am her daughter and take me away with her, and it should be all a lie—I should not be able to contradict her.”
Mavis disengaged herself a little coldly. Since the preceding evening there had been a shade of aloofness in her manner towards Hilda, which so far