"Mr.Kent isn't for bringing Miss Molly back again.

They'd their luggage along wi' 'em in the car, and Mr.Kent, he stopped at the 'Cliff' to have the tank filled up and took a matter of another half-dozen cans o' petrol with 'im." In an instant the whole dreadful significance of the thing leaped into Sara's mind.

Molly had bolted--run away with Lester Kent! It was easy enough now, in the flashlight kindled by Brady's slow, inexorable summing up of detail, to see the drift of recent happenings, the meaning of each small, disconcerting fact that added a fresh link to the chain of probability.
Molly's unwonted secretiveness; her strange, uncertain moods; her embarrassment at finding she was expected at Greenacres when she had presumably agreed to meet Lester Kent in Oldhampton; and, last of all, the sudden "cold" which had developed coincidentally with her father's absence from home and which had secured her freedom from any kind of supervision for the afternoon.

And the opportunity of clinching arrangements--probably already planned and dependent only on a convenient moment--had been provided by her errand to the post office to send off her father's telegram--it being as easy to send two telegrams as one.
The colour ebbed slowly from Sara's face as full realization dawned upon her, and she swayed a little where she stood.

With rough kindliness Brady stretched out a grimy hand and steadied her.
"'Ere, don't' take on, miss.