"I don't know his habit," he rejoined carelessly. "But it is almost as light as day in the road."
"He is usually so particular about detaining the servants," she said uneasily, evidently a bit disconcerted. "Dinner has been ready to serve for nearly an hour."
She returned indoors after a little, but Bayne still swung languidly to and fro, all unprescient of the impending disclosure. Presently he glanced through the window of the hall near at hand, noting how the tints of the pretty gowns of the two women now before the fire imparted a rich pictorial effect to the interior, the one costume being of a canary tint, with bretelles and girdle of brown velvet, while Mrs. Briscoe's striking beauty was accentuated by the artistic blending of two blues. In the interval, while his attention was diverted from the scene without, a change had supervened there, and he experienced a sudden disquieting monition as he observed that the groom, who had been hovering in the road at some distance, had been joined by another stable-man, and that the butler, easily distinguishable from the others in the gathering gloom by his white shirt front, was swiftly crossing the lawn toward them. Bayne sprang from the swing, leaped silently from the veranda into the grass, and walked quickly toward the group. They had already descried his approach, and eagerly met him half way—in a state verging on panic, he found to his own fright and dismay.
Something had happened, they averred. Mr. Briscoe was never late like this. He had too much consideration for his household. He would not risk occasioning Mrs. Briscoe anxiety. He would not keep little Archie out in the night air—he was very particular about little Archie. Oh, Fairy-foot was all right—there was not a horse in Tennessee that Mr. Briscoe could not handle. They had no fear at all about the mare. But after Mr. Briscoe had driven away, the groom who had been ordered to investigate the hotel had found signs of intrusion in the vacant building. Broken victuals were on the hearth of the serving-room adjoining the great dining-hall, and an old slouched hat was lying in that apartment, evidently dropped inadvertently near one of the tables. A rude lantern with a candle burned down almost to the socket was in an upper chamber, usually illuminated by acetylene gas, as was all the building. Bayne remembered, according the circumstance a fresh and added importance, the fleeing apparition in the vacant hotel that had frightened Lillian, and Mrs. Briscoe's declaration that a light had flashed the previous night from the interior of the deserted building. But this intrusion was not necessarily of inimical significance, he argued. Tramps, perhaps, or some belated hunter stealing a shelter from the blinding fog, or even petty thieves, finding an unguarded entrance—it might mean no more. In fact, such intrusion was the normal incident of any vacant house in remote seclusion, unprotected by a caretaker. But this reasoning did not convince the servants. Something had happened, they reiterated; something terrible had happened!
Bayne, flouting fear as a folly, yet himself feeling the cold chill of dismay, dared not dismiss their anxieties as groundless. He hastily arranged for a patrol of the only road by which Briscoe could return, incongruously feeling at the moment absurd and shamefaced in view of his host's indignation and ridicule should he presently appear. Bayne had ordered the phaeton with the intention of himself rousing the country-side and organizing a search when, to his consternation, the two ladies, who had observed the colloguing group, issued on the veranda, frantic with terror, pale and agonized. Both had grasped the fact of disaster, albeit unformulated, yet both hoped against hope.
"Take me with you!" Lillian cried, seizing Bayne's wrist in a grip like steel. "Take me to my child!"
He could not be rid of her importunacy, and he came to think it was well that the two should be separated, for Mrs. Briscoe had not abandoned all self-control, and her gallant struggle for composure appealed for his aid.
"No," she had said firmly; "Ned would expect me to wait for him here. Dead or alive, he will come back to me here."
He was glad to get Lillian out of her sight and hearing. With every muscle relaxed, almost collapsed, curiously ghastly in her gay gown, she was lifted bodily into the vehicle, repeating constantly with bloodless lips and a strange, false, mechanical voice, "Take me to my dead child!"
Once as they spun swiftly through the misty sheen and dewy shadow, the moisture-laden boughs that thrust across the narrow roadway now and again filliping them on the cheeks with perfumed showers, she turned that death-smitten face toward him and said in her natural, smooth tones, "You have your revenge at last. It couldn't be a heavier blow!"