But as she reached the door he said, half appealingly:-- "Whatever are your other intentions, Mrs.McClosky, as we are both Susy's guests, I beg you will say nothing of this to her while we are here, and particularly that you will not allow her to think for a moment that I have discussed MY relations to her with anybody." She flung herself out of the door without a reply; but on entering the dark low-ceilinged drawing-room she was surprised to find that Susy was not there.

She was consequently obliged to return to the veranda, where Clarence had withdrawn, and to somewhat ostentatiously demand of the servants that Susy should be sent to her room at once.

But the young girl was not in her own room, and was apparently nowhere to be found.
Clarence, who had now fully determined as a last resource to make a direct appeal to Susy herself, listened to this fruitless search with some concern.

She could not have gone out in the rain, which was again falling.

She might be hiding somewhere to avoid a recurrence of the scene she had perhaps partly overheard.