"WHERE is Charles?" she asked next day.
Edward had called for her early, had paid the Midlothian's bill and
tipped the Midlothian's servants, and now they were in a taxi on their
way to Paddington. She had definitely put her finger on the map that
morning, and its tip had covered the K's of Kenilworth and Warwick. She
was still almost breathless with the hurry with which she had been swept
away from the safe anchorage of the hotel, "and couldn't we have the
hood down?" she added.
"Charles," said Edward, "is at present boarded out at a mews down
Portland Road way, and I think we'd better keep the hood up. Look here!
I never thought of the newspapers. This is worse than ever."
He handed her the _Telegraph_. Yesterday's advertisement was repeated in
it--with this addition:
May be in company with tall, fair young man. Blue
eyes, military appearance. Possesses large, white
bull-terrier.
"Oh dear! They'll track us down," she said, and laughed. "What
sleuth-hounds they are! But they can't do anything to me, can they? They
can't take me back, I mean. I'm twenty-one, you know. Can't you do as
you like when you're twenty-one?"
She looked at the paper again, and now her face suddenly became clouded
and her eyes filled with tears. "I never thought of that." She hesitated
a moment and handed him the paper, pointing to the place with the finger
that had found Warwick and Kenilworth. Below the advertisement touching
the young man and the bull-terrier, he read:
SILVER LOCKS--Come back. I am ill and very anxious.