"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.