The utmost dismay and horror settled down upon the household at
Fairvale Park when it was found that every trace of Lady Vera's
whereabouts was swallowed up in impenetrable darkness and mystery.
Sir Harry and Lady Clive believed that Mrs. Cleveland was the guilty
party who had decoyed her from her home, and they foreboded that the
too-confiding girl had been murdered in cold blood by her ruthless foe.
Little Hal's story of the woman who had given him the note for Lady
Vera in the wood confirmed them in their first suspicions, and they
bitterly bewailed Lady Vera's mistaken clemency in letting her would-be
murderess go free that night in London.
But when Colonel Lockhart came down from London that evening in
response to their telegram, though he was almost distracted by this new
and crushing blow to his happiness, the quick instinct of love turned
his suspicions unerringly to the truth.
"It is not Mrs. Cleveland who has abducted Lady Vera. I cannot believe
it for an instant. She would not have ventured on such a course," he
says, decidedly; "Leslie Noble is the guilty party."
"Then what are we to do, Philip?" Lady Clive asks, piteously.
"We must oppose cunning to cunning," he answers, thoughtfully. "I shall
return to London to-night and employ a skillful detective to shadow
Leslie Noble's every footstep. You may be sure that the wretch has shut
Lady Vera up in some obscure place in the hope of coercing her to yield
to his wishes. Oh, Heaven, what anguish may not my darling be suffering
now while I am powerless to rescue her!"
He walks distractedly up and down the floor, while tears of not unmanly
grief gather in his troubled blue eyes.
"But, Philip, you forget that it was a woman who gave little Hal the
note for Lady Vera," exclaims Sir Harry, unwilling to give up his
theory of Mrs. Cleveland's handiwork in the abduction.
"Leslie Noble may have employed a woman as his tool in the affair, or
he may have masqueraded in female attire himself, but I am sure that
he is the guilty party," Colonel Lockhart answers, unshaken in his
conviction, "But to satisfy your doubts, Sir Harry, we will have a
watch set upon Mrs. Cleveland also. Nothing shall be left undone that
can possibly tend to the rescue of Lady Vera from the power of her
enemies."
He goes back to London that night.
Sir Harry Clive and his family follow him the next day. Two of the
most skillful detectives in London are quietly set on the track of the
supposed guilty parties. All London rings with the story of the daring
abduction of the beautiful Countess of Fairvale.
At first public opinion was strong against the Clevelands and Mr.
Noble, but when it is discovered that all three are living quietly
but openly in London, a doubt falls on the first suspicions. An
inexplicable mystery centers around that strange disappearance.
The sensation grows all the greater because, simultaneously with her
disappearance, Raleigh Gilmore had entered suit against her for the
title and estates of Fairvale, alleging that the true heiress had died
in her early girlhood, and that the late earl had foisted an impostor
on the public as his daughter.
But pending the return of the missing countess, the lawsuit lay in
abeyance. Nothing could be done in her absence, and conjecture became
rife over the strange circumstances of her abduction. Various opinions
were advanced.
Raleigh Gilmore did not hesitate to assert his conviction that there
had been no abduction in the case. Lady Vera had simply run away from
fear of the threatened suit against her, knowing that she could not
defend herself against the prosecution, and ashamed to stay and face
the trial where she would be branded as a beautiful and lying impostor
whom the late earl had adopted as his daughter.
There was not the slightest likelihood that she would ever return, he
asserted, vehemently, and he would have liked to take possession of
Fairvale at once, but the strong arm of the law held him back, and
meanwhile, Sir Harry Clive engaged the most eminent lawyers to defend
the missing heiress.
A man was sent to America to collect information at Washington. No
pains nor expense was spared on either side to make the contest a close
and exciting one. Raleigh Gilmore found few believers in his cause, and
few friends.
But amid all the storm of wonder and conjecture in London, there
was one woman whose suspicions had pointed, like Philip Lockhart's,
unerringly to the truth. This was Ivy Cleveland. Her jealous instincts
had at once settled upon her whilom husband as the abductor of Lady
Vera.
Meanwhile the weeks wane slowly with no tidings of the lost one. The
blackest mystery enshrouds her fate. The keen detectives are baffled
and thrown off the scent by Leslie Noble's inimitable _sang froid_. He
leads the careless life of a man about town, never leaving the city,
his slightest actions open to scrutiny, no mystery seeming to be hidden
under his comings and goings.
But though the detectives begin to hint that they are beating about
the wrong bush, Colonel Lockhart's firm convictions are in no wise
altered.
He holds them closely to their duty, though they find nothing
suspicious either in the movements of Mr. Noble or Mrs. Cleveland.
But though Colonel Lockhart is outwardly so calm and firm, his noble
heart is wrung with despair over the fate of his lost Vera.
"My poor Phil, this terrible sorrow is making an old man of you," his
sister sighs, sorrowfully, as she threads her jeweled fingers softly
through his hair.
"It is hard lines upon me, that is true, Nella," he answers, with a
repressed sigh, as he draws his arm around her waist.