MY Lady returned to the Abbey at the usual luncheon-hour, and partook of that meal (if sitting at the table can be called so doing) with the rest of the party; while Mary Forest kept watch at the boudoir window, with her mistress's opera-glasses in her hand, scanning the Windmill Hill.

There was no likelihood of Derrick's coming for hours yet, since he had not arrived already by the same train that had brought old Jacob's letter; but there was just a possibility of this. However, he did not come. The unfrequented road, which on the morrow would be thronged with the vehicles of Sir Richard's guests, had not a single passenger. It was one of the two ways we have spoken of leading to Dalwynch, and the shorter in point of distance, although not of time, because of the winding hill; but Derrick, coming from the direction of Coveton (not by the Dalwynch line, but another railway), could approach Mirk by no other route.

Immediately after luncheon, the carriage drew up at the door.

“I will not offer to go with you, dearest mother,” said Letty, “because there is so much to do at home, and the more because you will be absent yourself. But you will come back as soon as you can—there's a darling!—won't you? Nothing goes on as it should at the Abbey without you.”

“Yes, dear Letty! I will come back as soon as I can.”

My Lady cast a wistful look at her three children. She would have given a thousand pounds to have thrown her arms around their necks, and wept her fill; but such an indulgence might have cost them and her far more than that, or anything which money could estimate. What if her strength should fail her—if she should “break down,” as the saying is, at this supremest moment? She could only trust herself to nod and smile.

The whole party went out to the front door to see her off. The two young ladies standing on the hall steps with their arms round one another's waists (although I much doubt if they had grown to be the friends that they once were); Master Walter kissing his white hand to her with all the grace and fondness of a lover; Sir Richard handing her into the carriage with stately but affectionate courtesy. “The lower road—to Lever's the watchmaker's in High Street,” said he to the coachman, “and don't spare the horses.” Then, as the carriage drove away, he observed to the others: “What a strange freak it is of mamma to be going to Dalwynch at such a time as this about her watch. However, she ought to be back by five o'clock at latest.”

The carriage did return even before that hour; but it did not contain my Lady. It only brought back a letter from her, which the footman was instructed to place at once in the hands of her elder son. The man, however, had some difficulty in finding Sir Richard, who was superintending some finishing-touches that were being given to the interior of the marquee—the arrangement of certain flags over the place he was to occupy on the morrow. Sir Richard tore open the note, fearing he knew not what; then uttered a tremendous oath. His people stared, for unlike some “young masters,” the baronet scarcely ever misbehaved himself in that way. “Where did you leave my Lady, sirrah?” inquired he roughly of the footman.

“At the railway station, Sir Richard. Her Ladyship took the train for town.”

“Where is Miss Letty? Walter—Walter,” cried the baronet, “come here.”

“Hollo, what is it?” answered the captain, a little sulkily, for he was engaged in setting up an emblem composed of various weapons of war at the other end of the marquÉe; and pretty Polly, the gatekeeper's daughter, was handing him up certain highly-polished swords, and he was playfully accusing her of using them in transit as mirrors. “You haven't found out a mistake in the almanac, and that you came of age the day before yesterday, have you?”

“Worse than that,” returned poor Sir Richard simply. “Read that, man. What, in Heaven's name, are we to do now?”

“Let us go in and see Letty,” said Walter gravely, after he had read the note. “Perhaps she knows something about it; and if not, you may take your oath that Mary Forest does.”

“Do you, Walter? Don't trifle with me,” said the baronet earnestly; “if any business respecting yourself has taken my mother away, I conjure you to tell me all.”

“No, Richard. I give you my word that I know of no reason for this extraordinary conduct. It is true that that letter from Moss Abrahams gave her some annoyance, but that matter was settled long ago. I am as surprised and dumbfounded as yourself.”

“Dearest Richard!”—here he again perused my Lady's note—“urgent necessity compels me to leave home for a time. You will have the explanation on the 15th. That there may be many, many happy returns of to-morrow to you, dear boy, is the heartfelt prayer of your loving Mother.”—“How extraordinarily strange! When is the 15th? Let's see.”

“The day after to-morrow,” rejoined Sir Richard gloomily. “What will tomorrow be without our mother? Good Heaven, how dreadful is all this! Is it possible, think you, to put the people off?”

“Utterly out of the question, Richard; we should require five hundred messengers.”

They were walking on the lawn, and had now arrived at one of the open windows of the great ball-room, a splendid apartment, although the highly-decorated pink ceiling had been likened by a pert young architect (who wanted to persuade the baronet to let him pull down the Abbey, and build another one) to the ornaments on a twelfth-cake. Mrs Walter, Letty, and Arthur Haldane were all very busy here, but the last two not so entirely occupied with the work in hand as to be unaware of one another's presence. At another time, Sir Richard would have been annoyed at seeing them so close together, and obviously so well pleased with the propinquity, but now he was really glad to meet with the young barrister, for whose judgment he had a great respect.

“Letty—Arthur,” cried he, “read this. Do either of you know, can either of you guess, what on earth it means?”

“Mamma not to be here to-morrow!” ejaculated the former, when she had read the note. “I can scarcely believe my eyes.” But at the same time there came into her mind that vague but saddening talk which her mother had held with her but lately, when my Lady had said her malady was not one the doctors could cure. Arthur read the note twice over, not so much to master its contents, perhaps, as to frame his own reply to what had been asked of him.

“I certainly do not know,” said he, “what can have taken your dear mother at such a time as this. We may be sure, however, it is no mere freak of fancy, but that it is done for what she believes to be your good.”

“Our good!” broke forth Sir Richard impatiently. “How can it be for good that I should be placed to-morrow in a position the most embarrassing that can be conceived? What am I to say when people ask me 'Where is your mother?' Imagine what they will think of her absence on such an occasion, the most important”——

“Let us rather imagine, Richard,” interrupted Letty, laying her hand upon his arm, “what our dear mother must be suffering at this moment. As Arthur says, it can be no trivial matter that takes her thus suddenly away from us; and although she may have over-estimated its urgency, we may be sure that it is her anxiety for others—that is, for us—which has caused her to do so. Mamma is incapable of a selfish action.”

“I am not speaking for myself alone, Letty,” returned the baronet hotly.

“I did not accuse you of doing so, Richard. What I mean is this, that however much you may feel this misfortune, mamma has to bear the burden of its cause—whatever that may be—alone. She is thinking at this moment of the alarm and sorrow she has excited here, and we maybe sure is feeling for us at least as much as we feel for ourselves; and in addition to that, she has this trouble to bear, at even the nature of which we cannot guess.”

Sir Richard frowned, and did not reply; but Arthur unobserved stole Letty's hand, and pressed it, in token of his loving approval. “And who is the person who is to give us the explanation on the 15th, think you?” said Walter. “I'll wager—or at least I would do so, if I hadn't given up betting—that Mistress Forest can tell us if she would.”

“Then let us send for her at once,” cried Sir Richard hastily; “anything is better than this suspense.”

When the servant called for this purpose had been despatched: “I do not presume,” said Arthur gravely, “to dictate what is your duty; but if the case were mine, Sir Richard, and my mother had expressly stated that her motives would be explained at a certain date, I should hardly like to extract them beforehand from her confidential servant. Forgive me, for I know I am addressing one who is himself a man of the most scrupulous honour.”

The baronet bit his lip. “I don't know, I'm sure, Haldane. It is true, since my mother has gone to town, that nothing we can do can bring her back in time for——But at all events there can be no harm in asking how long she is likely to be away.—Ah, here is Mistress Forest. We want to hear about my Lady, Mary. She has gone to London, it seems, and we are not to know why until the day after to-morrow. Now, we are not going to ask you her reasons.”

“Thank you, Sir Richard,” said Mistress Forest, her puckered eyes looking really grateful.

“But what we do desire is, that you will tell us how long she will be away.”

“I am sure I can't tell, sir; Heaven knows I wish. I could,” answered the waiting-maid fervently. “She sent a big box over to Dalwynch by the carrier yesterday: that's all I know about it.”

“Then she herself is not going to give us the explanation in person, you think?” said the baronet gloomily.

“No, Sir Richard: not in person; at least, I believe not. Somebody else is going to do that for her.”

“And you know who that will be?” returned the young man sternly.

“I think—at least; yes, I know, sir; but it's not me,” added the waiting-maid hastily. “I hope I know my place better than that. But my Lady bade me say nothing about it, and, with all respect, wild horses should not tear it from me.”

Here Mistress Forest, who had always entertained considerable terror of her austere young master, could not forbear casting a beseeching glance towards Arthur Haldane.

“We already know from Mr Haldane's own lips,” observed Sir Richard with emphasis, and looking in the same direction, “that he is not in possession of the secret of my Lady's departure.”

“I certainly said as much,” returned Arthur haughtily; and with that, either because he was really annoyed, or did not wish to be further questioned, he stepped out upon the lawn, and walked away.

“All this is very unsatisfactory, and strange, and bad,” said the baronet, after a considerable pause. “But nothing is to be got, it seems, by asking questions. We must do then the best we can for to-morrow without my mother—you Letty, assisted by Mrs Walter here, must do the honours of the Abbey in her place—and I wish to Heaven,” added he, as he turned upon his heel, “that the day was well over.”

“What a nice agreeable temper Richard has, when anything goes wrong,” observed Walter, twirling his moustaches. “I'm hanged if I don't think it's that which has driven my mother away from home. She naturally enough concludes he will be unbearable when he becomes the master.”

“Fie, fie, Walter!” said Letty. “I think it is much more that she can no longer bear to listen to the cruel things she hears her two sons say of one another. She has spoken to me of it more than once of late with tears in her eyes.”

“Well, Sir Richard has a bad temper, Letty, there's no doubt about that,” observed Mrs Walter, striking in in defence of her husband.

“Yes; yet there are many things worse than that, Rose, and mamma has been accustomed to Richard all his life; but she has had trouble upon trouble for the last six months, as I am sure you cannot deny, and it is likely in the state of health to which I know she is reduced, that she feels herself totally unequal to the part she would be expected to play to-morrow.”

“I think Mr Haldane knows more of the matter than he chooses to say,” observed Rose, at once carrying the war into the enemy's camp.

“I don't think you quite understand him,” returned Letty, executing the same strategic movement; “anything like duplicity is altogether foreign to his character.”

“He looks simple enough certainly,” remarked Rose quietly. “But I noticed that when Sir Richard asked him whether he knew, or could guess what had taken Lady Lisgard from home, he confined himself to replying that he did not know.”

Letty made no answer, but applied herself with heightened colour to the occupation in which her brothers had interrupted her. Walter smiled sardonically, thinking of certain female savages he had been reading of that morning in some paper in the Field, apropos of rifle-grooves, who were expert in propelling poisoned darts from blow-pipes; then catching sight of his handsome face in one of the mirrors with which the ball-room was wainscoted, he nodded, as though he recognised some friend he was constantly in the habit of meeting, yet was always glad to see, and sauntered out. At first, he made mechanically for the marquee, but stopping himself, not as it seemed without some contention in his own mind, he turned his steps to some other part of the Park. “No,” said he to himself gaily, “I will be a good boy. It is true, I have had devilish hard lines lately, but then it was partly deserved. How, the poor mother has had just as hard, and has not deserved them a bit. I will do nothing that can cause her trouble now—not even run the risk of a bit of harmless flirtation, for there always is a risk about that, somehow. I wonder whether Letty was right about her going away; I'm sure I can't help Richard quarrelling with me—he will do it. And then there was that matter of Moss Abraham's—upon my life it must have been very trying to the dear old lady. And then there was my affair with Rose—humph! Well, I'm very sorry, Heaven knows, if my conduct has in any way contributed to such a catastrophe; but it's something, my dear mother, let me tell you, when your troubles are of that sort that you can run away from them. What an infernal fool I have made of myself in every way!”