第97章

"I can not find her," he said. "Mother, I do not understand this. She can not have left us. She was not unhappy--my beautiful child."

There was no slip of paper, no letter, no clew to her absence.

Mother and son looked blankly at each other.

"Ronald," she cried, "where is she? Where is the poor child?"

He tried to comfort her, but fear was rapidly mastering him.

"Let me see if Airlie can suggest anything," he said.

They went down to the breakfast room where Lord Airlie still waited for the young girl he was never more to meet alive. He turned round with a smile, and asked if Beatrice were coming.

The smile died from his lips when he saw the pale, anxious faces of mother and son.

"Hubert," said Lord Earle, "we are alarmed--let us hope without cause. Beatrice can not be found. My mother is frightened."

Lady Helena had sunk, pale and trembling, upon a couch. Lord Airlie looked bewildered. Lord Earle told him briefly how they had missed her, and what had been done.

"She must be trying to frighten us," he said; "she must have hidden herself. There can not be anything wrong." Even as he spoke he felt how impossible it was that his dignified Beatrice should have done anything wrong.

He could throw no light upon the subject. He had not seen her since he had kissed her when bidding her goodnight. Her maid was the last person to whom she had spoken. Suzette had left her in her own room, and since then nothing had been seen or heard of Beatrice Earle.

Father and lover went out together. Lord Airlie suggested that she had perhaps gone out into the gardens and had met with some accident there. They went carefully over every part--there was no trace of Beatrice. They went through the shrubbery out into the park, where the quiet lake shone amid the green trees.

Suddenly, like the thrust of a sharp sword, the remembrance of the morning spent upon the water came to Lord Airlie. He called to mind Beatrice's fear--the cold shudder that seized her when she declared that her own face with a mocking smile was looking up at her from the depths of the water.

He walked hurriedly toward the lake. It was calm and clear--the tall trees and green sedges swaying in the wind, the white lilies rising and falling with the ripples. The blue sky and green trees were reflected in the water, the pleasure boat was fastened to the boat house. How was he to know the horrible secret of the lake?

"Come away, Airlie!" cried Lord Earle. "I shall go mad! I will call all the servants, and have a regular search."

In a few minutes the wildest confusion and dismay reigned in the Hall; women wept aloud, and men's faces grew pale with fear.

Their beautiful, brilliant young mistress had disappeared, and none knew her fate. They searched garden, park, and grounds; men in hot haste went hither and thither; while Lady Earle lay half dead with fear, and Lillian rested calmly, knowing nothing of what had happened.

It was Lord Airlie who first suggested that the lake should be dragged. The sun rode high in the heavens then, and shone gloriously over water and land.

They found the drags, and Hewson, the butler, with Lee and Patson, two gardeners, got into the boat. Father and lover stood side by side on the bank. The boat glided softly over the water; the men had been once round the lake, but without any result.

Hope was rising again in Lord Airlie's heart, when he saw those in the boat look at each other, then at him.

"My lord," said Cowden, Lord Earle's valet, coming up to Hubert, "pray take my master home; they have found something at the bottom of the lake. Take him home; and please keep Lady Earle and the women all out of the way."

"What is it?" cried Lord Earle. "Speak to me, Airlie. What is it?"

"Come away," said Lord Airlie. "The men will not work while we are here."

They had found something beneath the water; the drags had caught in a woman's dress; and the men in the boat stood motionless until Lord Earle was out of sight.

Through the depths of water they saw the gleam of a white, dead face, and a floating mass of dark hair. They raised the body with reverent hands. Strong men wept aloud as they did so. One covered the quiet face, and another wrung the dripping water from the long hair. The sun shone on, as though in mockery, while they carried the drowned girl home.

Slowly and with halting steps they carried her through the warm, sunny park where she was never more to tread, through the bright, sunlit gardens, through the hall and up the broad staircase, the water dripping from her hair and falling in large drops, into the pretty chamber she had so lately quitted full of life and hope.

They laid her on the white bed wherefrom her eyes would never more open to the morning light, and went away.

"Drowned, drowned! Drowned and dead!" was the cry that went from lip to lip, till it reached Lord Earle where he sat, trying to soothe his weeping mother. "Drowned! Quite dead!" was the cry that reached Lillian, in her sick room, and brought her down pale and trembling. "Drowned and dead hours ago," were the words that drove Lord Airlie mad with the bitterness of his woe.

They could not realize it. How had it happened? What had taken her in the dead of the night to the lake?

They sent messengers right and left to summon doctors in hot haste, as though human skill could avail her now.

"I must see her," said Lord Airlie. "If you do not wish to kill me, let me see her."

They allowed him to enter, and Lord Earle and his mother went with him. None in that room ever forgot his cry--the piercing cry of the strong man in his agony--as he threw himself by the dead girl's side.

"Beatrice, my love, my darling, why could I not have died for you?"

And then with tears of sympathy they showed him how even in death the white cold hand grasped his locket, holding it so tightly that no ordinary foe could remove it.

"In life and in death!" she had said, and she had kept her word.