The sun shone bright and warm in the breakfast room at Earlescourt.
The rays fell upon the calm, stately face of Lady Helena, upon the
grave countenance of her son, upon the bright, handsome features of
Lord Airlie. They sparkled on the delicate silver, and showed off the
pretty china to perfection. The breakfast was upon the table, but the
three occupants of the room had been waiting. Lady Helena took her
seat.
"It seems strange," she said to Lord Earle, "to breakfast without
either of the girls. I would not allow Lillian to rise; and from some
caprice Beatrice forbade her maid to call her, saying she was tired."
Lord Earle made some laughing reply, but Lady Helena was not quite
pleased. Punctuality with her had always been a favorite virtue. In
case of real illness, allowance was of course to be made; but she
herself had never considered a little extra fatigue as sufficient
reason for absenting herself from table.
The two gentlemen talked gayly during breakfast. Lord Earle asked
Hubert if he would go with him to Holte, and Lord Airlie said he had
promised to drive Beatrice to Langton Priory.
Hearing that, Lady Helena thought it time to send some little warning
to her grandchild. She rang for Suzette, the maid who waited upon
Beatrice, and told her to call her young mistress.
She stood at her writing table, arranging some letters, when the maid
returned. Lady Helena looked at her in utter wonder--the girl's face
was pale and scared.
"My lady," she said, "will you please come here? You are wanted very
particularly."
Lady Helena, without speaking to either of the gentlemen, went to the
door where the girl stood.
"What is it, Suzette?" she asked. "What is the matter?"
"For mercy's sake, my lady," replied the maid, "come upstairs. I I can
not find Miss Beatrice--she is not in her room;" and the girl trembled
violently or Lady Helena would have smiled at her terror.
"She is probably with Miss Lillian," she said. "Why make such a
mystery, Suzette?"
"She is not there, my lady; I can not find her," was the answer.
"She may have gone out into the garden or the grounds," said Lady
Helena.
"My lady," Suzette whispered, and her frightened face grew deathly
pale, "her bed has not been slept in; nothing is touched in her room;
she has not been in it all night."
A shock of unutterable dread seized Lady Earle; a sharp spasm seemed to
dart through her heart.
"There must be some mistake," she said, gently; "I will go upstairs
with you."
The rooms were without occupant; no disarray of jewels, flowers, or
dresses, no little slippers; no single trace of Beatrice's presence was
there.
The pretty white bed was untouched--no one had slept in it; the blinds
were drawn, and the sunlight struggled to enter the room. Lady Helena
walked mechanically to the window, and drew aside the lace curtains;
then she looked round.
"She has not slept here," she said; "she must have slept with Miss
Lillian. You have frightened me, Suzette; I will go and see myself."
Lady Helena went through the pretty sitting room where the books
Beatrice had been reading lay upon the table, on to Lillian's chamber.
The young girl was awake, looking pale and languid, yet better than she
had looked the night before. Lady Earle controlled all emotion, and
went quietly to her.
"Have you seen Beatrice this morning?" she asked. "I want her."
"No," replied Lillian; "I have not seen her since just before dinner
last evening."
"She did not sleep with you, then?" said Lady Earle.
"No, she did not sleep here," responded the young girl.
Lady Helena kissed Lillian's face, and quitted the room; a deadly,
horrible fear was turning her faint and cold. From the suite of rooms
Lord Earle had prepared and arranged for his daughters a staircase ran
which led into the garden. He had thought at the time how pleasant it
would be for them. As Lady Helena entered, Suzette stood upon the
stairs with a bow of pink ribbon in her hand.
"My lady," she said, "I fastened the outer door of the staircase last
night myself. I locked it, and shot the bolts. It is unfastened now,
and I have found this lying by it. Miss Earle wore it last evening on
her dress."
"Something terrible must have happened," exclaimed Lady Helena.
"Suzette, ask Lord Earle to come to me. Do not say a word to any one."
He stood by her side in a few minutes, looking in mute wonder at her
pale, scared face.
"Ronald," she said, "Beatrice has not slept in her room all night. We
can not find her."
He smiled at first, thinking, as she had done, that there must be some
mistake, and that his mother was fanciful and nervous; but, when Lady
Helena, in quick, hurried words, told him of the unfastened door and
the ribbon, his face grew serious. He took the ribbon from the maid's
hand--it seemed a living part of his daughter. He remembered that he
had seen it the night before on her dress, when he had held up the
beautiful face to kiss it. He had touched that same ribbon with his
face.
"She may have gone out into the grounds, and have been taken ill," he
said. "Do not frighten Airlie, mother; I will look round myself."
He went through every room of the house one by one, but there was no
trace of her. Still Lord Earle had no fear; it seemed so utterly
impossible that any harm could have happened to her.
Then he went out into the grounds, half expecting the beautiful face to
smile upon him from under the shade of her favorite trees. He called
aloud, "Beatrice!" The wind rustled through the trees, the birds sang,
but there came no answer to his cry. Neither in the grounds nor in the
garden could he discover any trace of her. He returned to Lady Helena,
a vague fear coming over him.
"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.