style="font-size:15px;"> Telephone inquiries regarding the lost child began to come in the second day, but none of any comfort to the distracted mother.
Not one intimation of her husband’s quarrel with Corway had reached her. Mrs. Harris had been careful, upon Constance’s recovery at the reception, not to breathe a word, or to allow, where she could control it, the faintest whisper likely to arouse her suspicion.
And as for Hazel, she had not clearly understood Mr. Thorpe’s drift when he assaulted Corway. Nevertheless, she somehow had a vague idea that Constance was the cause; but being a discreet young woman, she had refrained from mentioning anything about it to her, thus leaving Constance completely ignorant of the true cause of John Thorpe’s absence from home.
Perhaps if she had not been so absorbed in the recovery of Dorothy, her attention would have been arrested on perusing one of the daily papers by an ambiguous paragraph referring to a choice morsel of scandal on the “tapis” in a prominent family, and which was likely to terminate in a tragedy. It was a society paragraph separate from the report of the probable drowning of the child, Dorothy Thorpe. Several personal acquaintances had become aware, through the crafty Rutley, of a serious difference having arisen between John Thorpe and his beautiful wife, and some of these personal acquaintances, with significant looks, at once connected it with the mysterious disappearance of the child.
The fact that none of the fashionable set had visited her since the reception did not suggest a thought of being shunned. And so she waited for news of her child – waited with heart leaden with the chill of hope deferred – waited in momentary expectation of the home-coming of John.
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