He was leaning against the door lintel talking to her now, and she had not heard what he had said.

"I’m sorry," she apologized. "I was thinking about the dinner. What did you say?" Why had she not told him what she was really thinking? Too sentimental. It would embarrass him.

"Lucius Stourbridge," he repeated very clearly. "His bride-to-be left the party in the middle of a croquet game and has not been seen since. That was three days ago."

She stopped scraping the carrots and turned to look at him.

"Left how? Didn’t anybody go after her?"

"They thought at first she’d been taken ill." He told her the story as he had heard it.

She tried to imagine herself in Miriam Gardiner’s place. What could have been in her mind as she ran from the garden? Why? It was easy enough to think of a moment’s panic at the thought of the change in her life she was committing herself to and things that would be irrevocable once she had walked down the aisle of the church and made her vows before God—and the congregation. But you overcame such things. You came back with an apology and made some excuse about feeling faint.

Or if you really had changed your mind, you said so, perhaps with hideous embarrassment, guilt, fear. But you did not simply disappear.

"What is it?" he asked, looking at her face. "Have you thought of something?"

She remembered the carrots and started working again, although the longer it took to prepare dinner the more chance there was she could force herself to eat again. Her fingers moved more slowly.

"I suppose there wasn’t someone else?" she asked. The pan was coming to the boil, little bubbles beginning to rise from the bottom and burst. She should hurry with the potatoes and put on a second pan for the cabbage. If she chopped it fiercely it would not take long.

He said nothing for a few moments. "I suppose it’s the only answer," he concluded. "Treadwell must be involved somehow, or why didn’t he come back?"

"He saw his chance to steal the coach, and he just took it," she suggested, putting the potatoes and carrots into the pan, a little salt in it, then the lid on. "William?"

"What?"

How should she approach this without either inviting him to tell her to give up working at the hospital on one hand, or on the other, implying that she expected a higher standard of living than he was able to offer her?

"Are you going to take the case?"

"I already told you that. I wish I hadn’t, but I gave my word."

"Why do you regret it?" She kept her eyes on the knife, her fingers and the cabbage.

"Because there’s nothing I could find out that would bring anything but tragedy to them," he replied a little tartly.

She did not speak for a few minutes, busying herself with getting out the mutton first and carving slices off it and then replacing it in the pantry. She found the last of the pickles— she should have purchased more—and set the table.