Mr. Atkins and Sir John Freise approached our hero, and the baronet laid a kindly hand upon the young earl’s shoulder.
“Forgive us for interrupting your happy reverie, Lord Towyn,” he said, “but we are very anxious. Miss Wynde writes from Brussels, and in good spirits? We have been troubling ourselves for nothing?”
The young earl did not look around, nor did he speak. He only clutched the letter tighter in his fingers.
“We have got into a panic for nothing,” said Atkins, smiling. “We will keep the joke to ourselves. I would not have Mr. Black curling his cynical lips over our folly, not for worlds. No doubt Miss Wynde satisfactorily explains her previous silence, my lord, and we are free to return home again, wiser if not better men?”
The young earl turned to his companions now, and they started when they saw how deadly pale he was, and what a look of terror and anguish gleamed from his warm blue eyes.
“Miss Wynde is not ill?” cried Sir John.
Lord Towyn raised his arm, waving the letter in the air.
“This letter is in Neva’s handwriting, and signed with her name,” he said, in a strained voice. “It purports to come from her, but, before God, I believe it to be a forgery! My instinct tells me that Neva never wrote it. We are upon the wrong track. Neva is not at Brussels. Perhaps she is not out of England. She is in the hands of her enemies, who have formed some foul conspiracy against her, and we, O God! are powerless to save her!”
CHAPTER III.
AN ADVERTISEMENT QUICKLY ANSWERED.
As the hour drew near for the arrival of the expected guest at Sandy Lands, a suppressed excitement pervaded the pert little villa from basement to attic. The servants had all received orders to wait upon Mrs. Wroat with the utmost alacrity, and some notion of her wealth and eccentricity had been conveyed to them, together with the idea that Mr. and Mrs. Blight entertained “expectations” of inheriting the old lady’s fortune at her death.