Dora Thorne by Charlotte Mary Brame (best free e reader .txt) 📕

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.


Chapter XLII


While the weeping group still stood there, doctors came; they looked at the quiet face, so beautiful in death, and said she had been dead for hours. The words struck those who heard them with unutterable horror. Dead, while those who loved her so dearly, who would have given their lives for her, had lain sleeping near her, unconscious of her doom--dead, while her lover had waited for her, and her father had been intently thinking of her approaching wedding.

What had she suffered during the night? What awful storm of agony had driven her to the lake? Had she gone thither purposely? Had she wandered to the edge and fallen in, or was there a deeper mystery? Had foul wrong been done to Lord Earle's daughter while he was so near her, and yet knew nothing of it?

She still wore her pretty pink evening dress. What a mockery it looked! The delicate laces were wet