Wilma and Portia were right there in front of them.
“I am very sorry, Miss Martin,” Portia said. “But really you ought to have been watching her more carefully. You are in charge of all these charity girls, are you not?”
“A blind girl has no business being here at all,” Wilma added.
“Hold your tongues!” Joseph said harshly. “Both of you.”
He did not wait to either see or hear their response. He hurried away with Claudia.
But where was there to hurryto?
“Where can she possibly have gone?” Claudia asked, though clearly she did not expect an answer. She clung to his hand as tightly as he clung to hers. “Where would she have tried to go? Let usthink. To join you in the house?”
“Doubtful,” he said, seeing Lauren and Kit, also hand in hand, hurry toward it.
“To find Eleanor and the others, then?” she asked.
“They went past the front of the house while I was there,” he said. “They went toward the little bridge and the wilderness walk beyond.”
“They would have seen her if she had gone in that direction,” she said. “So would you. There are four searchers going that way anyway. There is no point in our following them.”
They had come to the driveway and stood there in horrible indecision again. Lizzie’s name was echoing from every direction. But there were no cries from anyone to indicate that she had been found.
Joseph drew a few steadying breaths. Continued panic would get him nowhere.
“The only direction no one has taken,” he said, “is the one out of Alvesley.”
She looked to their right, down the long sweep of lawn and driveway to the roofed Palladian bridge across the river and the woods beyond.
“She would surely not have gone that way,” she said.
“Probably not,” he agreed. “But would the dog?”
“Oh, dear God,” she said. “Dear God, where is she?” Her eyes filled with tears and she bit her lip. “Where is she?”
“Come,” he said, turning with her to stride resolutely down the driveway. “There is nowhere else left to look.”
“How could this have happened?” she asked.
“I went to the house,” he said harshly.
“I went for a walk.”
“I ought not to have let her leave home in London,” he said. “She has always been safe there.”
“I ought not to have taken my eyes off her,” she said. “She was my only reason for coming this afternoon. She was my responsibility. Miss Hunt was quite right to scold me.”
“Let us not start blaming ourselves or each other,” he said. “She had numerous chaperones this afternoon. Everyone was keeping an eye on her.”
“That was the whole trouble,” she said. “When everyone is looking after someone, no one really is. Everyone assumes she is with someone else. I ought to know that from experience at school. Oh, Lizzie, whereareyou?”
They stood inside the bridge for a few moments, looking out in all directions, desperately hoping for a sign of the missing Lizzie.
But why was she not answering any of the calls? Joseph could still hear them from where he stood.
“L-i-z-z-i-e!”he yelled from one side of the bridge, cupping his hands about his mouth.
“Lizzie!”Claudia called from the other side.
