...To think of Gora as a thief was fantastic...was it?...Was she
not Mortimer's sister?...Why he rather than she?...And what after all
did she know of Gora?...She inspired some people with distrust, even
fear....That might be the cause of Mortimer's depression....He knew it....
At all events it was a straw and she grasped it as if it had been a plank
in mid-ocean. With even a bare chance that Mortimer was innocent it would
be unpardonable to insult and wound him....Nor was it quite possible to ask
him if his sister were a thief. She must wait, of course.
And if Gora had taken the bonds they might be recovered. It would be like a
woman to secrete them in a reaction of terror after having nerved herself
up to the deed.
She wished that Gora had gone to Hong Kong. Bolted. Then she could be
certain. But at least she had a respite, and she felt so ebullient that she
almost forgot her loss, and swept Morty over to the Lawtons after dinner;
and the Judge took them all to the movies.
CHAPTER IX
I
Alexina would listen to no remonstrance. Gora might send her trunks to
Geary Street if she liked, but she must come home to Ballinger House and
spend at least one night with her brother and sister, who had missed her
quite dreadfully. Gora wondered how Alexina could have missed her so
touchingly in Europe, but accepted the invitation, as a note from the
surgeon to whom she had written by the previous steamer asked her to hold
herself in readiness for an operation a week hence.
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