"What of her glass without her?
The blank grey
There, where the pool is blind of the moon's face--
Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away!"DANTE G. ROSSETTI.
"Good God!" cried Errington impatiently "What's the matter? Speak out!"
He had just arrived home. He had barely set foot within his own door, and full of lover-like ardor and eagerness was about to hasten to his wife's room,--when his old servant Morris stood in his way trembling and pale-faced,--looking helplessly from him to Neville,--who was as much astonished as Sir Philip, at the man's woe-begone appearance.
"Something has happened," he stammered faintly at last. "Her ladyship--"
Philip started--his heart beat quickly and then seemed to grow still with a horrible sensation of fear.
"What of her?" he demanded in low hoarse tones. "Is she ill?"
Morris threw up his hands with a gesture of despair.
"Sir Philip, my dear master!" cried the poor old man. "I do not know whether she is ill or well--I cannot guess! My lady went out last night at a little before eight o'clock,--and--and she has never come home at all! We cannot tell what has become of her! She has gone!"
And tears of distress and anxiety filled his eyes. Philip stood mute. He could not understand it. All color fled from his face--he seemed as though he had received a sudden blow on the head which had stunned him.
"Gone!" he said mechanically. "Thelma--my wife gone! Why should she go?"
And he stared fixedly at Neville, who laid one hand soothingly on his arm.
"Perhaps she is with friends," he suggested. "She may be at Lady Winsleigh's or Mrs. Lorimer's."
"No, no!" interrupted Morris. "Britta, who stayed up all night for her, has since been to every house that my lady visits and no one has seen or heard of her!"
"Where is Britta?" demanded Philip suddenly.
"She has gone again to Lady Winsleigh's," answered Morris, "she says it is there that mischief has been done,--I don't know what she means!"
Philip shook off his secretary's sympathetic touch, and strode through the rooms to Thelma's boudoir. He put aside the velvet curtains of the portiere with a noiseless hand--somehow he felt as if, in spite of all he had just heard, she must be there as usual to welcome him with that serene sweet smile which was the sunshine of his life. The empty desolate air of the room smote him with a sense of bitter pain,--only the plaintive warble of her pet thrush, who was singing to himself most mournfully in his gilded cage, broke the heavy silence. He looked about him vacantly. All sorts of dark forebodings crowded on his mind,--she must have met with some accident, he thought with a shudder,--for that she would depart from him in this sudden way of her own accord for no reason whatsoever seemed to him incredible--impossible.