"There has been no cloud?"

"Not the slightest! She seemed to share in her daughter's happiness and in mine. She has told me more than once that she thought fate had made us for each other."

"And she helped on the wedding-day?"

"In a thousand ways. She and Marcia worked together upon the trousseau. She helped with all the plans. Surely, Mr. Lester, if she objected, she wouldn't have waited till the last minute to make her objection known."

"Most certainly she would not," I agreed.

"Besides," Curtiss added hoarsely, "I don't believe that even her mother could have kept Marcia from me."

"She's a widow?" I asked.

"Yes. Her husband has been dead ten or twelve years. Marcia is the only child."

"She seems to have had her share of sorrow," I remarked. "Her face shows it."

"She has not been quite well lately; but she was always a little—well—sad, it seemed to me; serious, you know; smiling sometimes, but rarely laughing. I've fancied she grieved for her husband; but I really know nothing about it."

"She doesn't look very strong," I hazarded, in the hope that Curtiss really knew more than he supposed.

"She isn't strong; but I've never seen her really ill. She is subject to spells of depression, so Marcia told me. Of course, I've known her only six months."

So there was an old trouble, as I had thought, beside which this new one seemed of little moment. She had been schooled by suffering; perhaps I had misjudged her in thinking her indifferent. But it was evident that I could get no further information from Curtiss.

"You were at the church," I asked, "when you heard that Miss Lawrence had disappeared?"

"Yes," he answered hoarsely. "Royce brought me word."

"And you came straight here?"

"Yes."

"And searched for her?"

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