"Get up, Miss Pauline, get up quick!"

"What is the matter, Sally?" cries Pauline, rubbing her eyes. "How funny you look! Has anything happened?"

"Hush! Yes; your sister—Miss Addie—is—is missing! She is not in her room, and her bed has not been slept in all night."

"Addie—Addie missing? I—I don't understand! What do you mean, Sally? Missing—where?"

"Heaven knows—Heaven knows!" cries the old woman, wringing her hands. "I believe she had words with her husband after dinner last night. She went to her room, saying she had a headache, and—and no one has seen or heard anything of her since."

Pauline, now thoroughly awake and startled, springs out of bed.

"But her husband, Sally! He—he knows where she is? What does he say?"

"I told him, and he said nothing—absolutely nothing; he didn't seem surprised or startled, but just went into his study, locked the door after him, and has been there ever since."

"I—I don't think there is anything to be alarmed about," says Pauline, her teeth chattering nevertheless; "it is a sudden quarrel, I suppose. She—she is very hot tempered, you know, and has gone off in a huff for a couple of days to Aunt Jo. Give me a bit of paper, Sally. I'll scribble a telegram to Leamington, and we'll have an answer in half an hour, and—wait—wait—I'll send another to Bob—he'll be wanted on the spot to patch up matters. Now, Sally, I'll depend on you to keep it as dark as possible. Don't let Lottie know on any account, or the other servants, if possible. We'll have it all right before the evening, never fear!"

Three hours later Robert Lefroy, warm, dusty, and excited from suspense—for the telegram has told him nothing but that he is wanted immediately—arrives at Nutsgrove, and is received by Pauline with scared white face in the dining-room.

"What is it? What has happened? Any one ill—hurt?" he asks breathlessly.

"No, no! Speak lower, and keep—keep composed as I am. It's Addie—she's missing! Since last night nobody knows what—what has become of her. Listen, listen—don't speak yet! She had a row with her husband after dinner, and must have gone away soon after, and—"

"Yes—Aunt Jo? Have you tele—"

"I have, and she's not there, and has not been there. I've made cautious inquiries at the farm; but no one saw her there either; and—and I don't know what to do, I'm so frightened!"

"Her husband—Tom—what does he say? What is he doing?"

"He has been locked up in his study all the morning, and I—I was afraid to go in to him. I thought that I would wait until you came, that you would—would manage better than I should."

"I will go to him at once. Give me a glass of wine, sister."

"But, Bob darling, listen—listen to what they say! Oh, it's dreadful—dreadful to have such—such vile suspicions afloat!"

"What suspicions? What d'ye mean?"

"Sally heard in the kitchen, half an hour ago, that one of the maids, seeing off a friend by the 10.30 up-train last night, is sure—sure she saw Addie at the station, going off in the train with—with a stranger, who—who took her ticket for her!"

"A stranger! What stranger? What the deuce do you mean, Pauline?" cries the boy fiercely, shaking off her clinging arms.

"Oh, I don't mean anything! It's only what they say, the wretches! And that is not all; they say she—she was heard two or three times out in the grounds last week talking to some man and crying bitterly. The cook's little sister and brother heard her one night, and saw her distinctly."

"Pauline! How could you degrade yourself by listening to such low, vile slanders? It is infamous!"

"It was Sally who told me—told me in order that her husband might know at once and take some measures to stop these scandalous lies. He has not stirred from his study to-day."

"I will go to him at once. I'll stir him pretty quick, I can tell you! My poor little sister! I'll see you avenged," says Robert fiercely. He knocks at the door boldly. After a few seconds he is admitted; and stands facing his brother-in-law, who greets him gravely.

"Tom, Tom," he bursts out at once, "what—what is the meaning of all this? What is there between you and Addie? Where has she gone to? What does it mean?"

"Your sister has left me, Robert. I know nothing more about her movements than this note will tell you. I found it this morning on my table, her wedding-ring inclosed."

Robert takes up the note and reads slowly the following—

"This is to tell you I am going. I see it is all over at last. I could not live with you again after your words to me this evening. You have done your best, but you have failed. Heaven reward you and keep you all the same! Do not ever think of me again; I am going to him who has brought this ruin on me; it is his duty to bear with me now for the few short years I may yet have to drag on my wretched life.

Adelaide."

Robert raises a bloodless face and stares stupidly at his brother-in-law.

"I—I don't understand. What can she mean? For Heaven's sake, Armstrong, can't you speak? 'I am going to him who has brought this—this ruin on me.' She—she must be mad—stark staring mad! Whom—whom does she mean? Tom, Tom, for Heaven's sake, tell me!"

"She means that she has gone to the man," says Armstrong, with contemptuous sternness, "whom you forced her to jilt in order to marry me."

The boy's expression of bewilderment is so genuine as to impress him for a moment.

"The man we forced her to jilt to marry you! The mystery thickens. She jilted no man to marry you, Armstrong; I'll swear it on the Bible, if you like. You were the only man who ever asked her in marriage; there was no one else—we knew no one, she went nowhere. You must be mad yourself to say such a thing!"

"There was not this cousin—Edward Lefroy—the casual mention of whose name disturbed her so much a few evenings ago that she had to leave the room in your very presence?"

"Edward Lefroy—Teddy Lefroy!" he retorts impatiently. "Why, he was only a boy, a schoolboy, whom we looked on as a brother, whom—whom Addie has not met since she was a child! Teddy Lefroy? Your suspicion is absurd, below contempt, Armstrong! I—I am ashamed of you!"

Armstrong only smiles very bitterly.

"You will not think my suspicions below contempt when I tell you, my boy, that I myself saw your sister a few evenings ago crying in this man's arms, bemoaning her fate, struggling weakly against the temptation into which she has now fallen, urging—"

"You saw her—you saw her, you heard her! Armstrong, I don't believe you!" he bursts out impulsively. "I don't believe you! You were dreaming, drunk—"

"No, Robert, no," he answers drearily. "I was quite sober, and I was standing within a few yards of them both. There was no mistake—I heard and saw them distinctly."

"And—and you did not interfere?"

"No. Why should I? Your sister and I had lived for many months in a mere semblance of union, her actions were quite free. Besides, I thought that worldly consideration, her affection for you, would prevent her from taking the extreme step she did."

"I don't believe it, I don't believe it!" cries Robert, his voice struggling with rising sobs. "I don't care what you saw or what you heard, Thomas Armstrong! I have known my sister for twenty years, and you for one, and I'll stake her honor, her virtue, her truth against your word any day, and maintain it before the world too! How dare you say such things of her, you—you cowardly low-bred upstart! Oh, Tom, Tom," pleads the poor lad, hot tears raining down his cheeks unchecked, "look me in the face and tell me you don't believe it! You don't, you can't, you dare not believe it! Think of her as you saw her daily amongst us here—so light-hearted, careless, impulsive, so quick to resent injustice, so tender with suffering, so anxious to please you, to entice you into her innocent girlish pleasures, so dainty in her speech, in her actions—dainty even to prudishness! You—you have seen her in society among men; but you have never detected a light word, a flirting glance. No, no! She was voted slow, heavy in hand, full of airs among our fellows. Men never dared try to flirt with her as they do with other young married women, I tell you. Tom, Tom, think of all this, and say—say you don't believe it—say you will put your shoulder to the wheel and help me to clear up the mystery, find her, and bring her home to us again! Addie, Addie, the best of us all, the sweetest, the most unselfish, the truest-hearted! She would go through fire and water for any one she loved. You don't know her as I do. Listen, Tom, listen! A few years ago, when I had scarlet fever, and they said I could not recover, she ran away from the farm to which they had all been sent, climbed into my room through the window, hid under the bed when the doctor came, and remained to nurse me until I was well. And you think—you think that she—"

He stops and looks imploringly into Armstrong's sad stern face; but he answers only by laying a pitying hand on the boy's shoulder.

"I tell you, I tell you," he continues passionately, shaking off his hand, "that she was nearer heaven than any of us, all her life through—the best of us all, whom every one loved, whom every one turned to for help, for pity, for affection—the best of us all—the best of us all! You know that yourself—you, her husband. I have seen it in your face—ay, twenty times. And you believe that Heaven would let such as she become a—"

The harsh word dies on his lips, his head falls forward on his outstretched arms.

"Robert," answers Armstrong, after a short pause, "you plead well. There is much truth in what you urge; but I, alas, can convince you in your own words! Your sister was hot, impulsive, warm-hearted, and—and would go through fire and water for any one she loved. She is doing so now, Heaven help her!"

"I don't believe it, I don't believe it! Give me proofs!"

"Proofs!" he repeats impatiently. "Great Heaven, boy, what surer proof could I give you than her own words? Read her confession again. You—you don't suppose it's a fraud? What motive could I have in forging the record of my dishonor?"

"I can't understand it, I can't understand it!"

"I can, and you will also, when I tell you that the villain, in my hearing, threatened to take his own life if she refused to listen to him. Judge the effect of such a threat on any one of her impulsive nature."

"I—I wish I had killed him that day I met him! Oh if I had only known, only guessed! Even now, Armstrong, I tell you I can not realize it—I can not! He was utterly penniless too; he asked me to lend him a five-pound note, and told me, if he could manage his passage-money, he would sail in the 'Chimborazo' for Melbourne on the seventeenth."

"He has managed his passage-money. Your sister got five hundred pounds from me last evening."

The words seemed to have slipped out unconsciously, for the deep flush of shame that spreads over Robert's face is reflected as warmly in the speaker's the same moment.

There is a pause, broken only by Robert's hot panting breath; then Armstrong speaks again.

"The 'Chimborazo,' you say? She sailed from Gravesend on the seventeenth, and takes in passengers at Plymouth two days later. To-day is—let me see—the nineteenth. Yes, they would be just in time, leaving here last night, to sail in her."

"Tom," says Robert, rising to his feet, "will you grant me a last request? Come with me now at once, and see if—if your suspicion is correct, if we can find any trace of them on board—I—I mean at the shipping-agents, among the list of cabin-passengers. Will you, will you?"

"Yes, my boy, if you like," he answers wearily. "But, if my suspicion is verified to-day, you must never allude to this subject again before me. I do not object to let you and yours continue to look on me as a friend, but you must forget henceforth that you ever called me brother-in-law."

"Yes," Robert answers, his handsome head downcast, his burning eyes painfully averted—"yes, I—I can easily do that, because—because, I shall forget I ever had a sister. Armstrong, Armstrong, you—you understand what I feel, if—if this should prove true. I—I may not be able to speak to you again; but you understand, don't you, that the pain, the disgrace, the wrong that we—that she has brought on your life can never, if I live to be an old man, be entirely wiped from mine? You understand," he continues, with flashing eyes, the veins in his neck swelling with suppressed emotion, "that, if—if either of them crossed my path at this moment, I should have as little compunction in striking them dead at my feet as I should have in crushing out the life of the meanest, most harmless insect that crawls on earth? You—you believe me, don't you?"

"Yes, Robert, I do," he answers, grasping Robert's outstretched hand, feeling for the first time in his life a sense of respect, of esteem almost, for the unfortunate boy.