Uncertainty and suspense were increasing now in all their minute horror at Dundargue; while surmises proved endless, futile, and unavailing.
He was gone—but where, or how, and why?
'Something has happened—something fatal—to my son!' wailed Lady Aberfeldie. 'Give me back those fatal diamonds, Eveline. They are never worn, that sorrow does not come to Dundargue!'
'Take courage, my lady,' said old Tappleton, the butler; 'ill news aye travels fast enough, and if ought was wrang wi' the Master, we should hae heard o't ere now.'
Evan Cameron, now with his regiment, and the legal agents of the family at Edinburgh, were alike perplexed on the receipt of letters from Lord Aberfeldie inquiring anxiously if they knew anything of the movements of Allan, and both telegraphed back that they could give no information on the subject.
With these telegrams the last hope passed away, and when the third day of his disappearance began to close a kind of horror seemed to settle over the household, and again a general, and, of course, unavailing, search was made through the entire neighbourhood.
On the face of the servants, male and female, there was never a smile now, as they all loved Allan well; it was no assumed expression they wore; but they went about their daily work with a hushed and subdued air as if there was death in the house, and they fully felt the weight of the mystery.
And ever at table stood the vacant chair, while covers were laid as usual for the absent one.
An accident must have happened; but of what nature? Lord Aberfeldie was beginning to think grimly, vaguely, and painfully of the future. If aught fatal had happened to Allan—his only son—an idea from which his soul shrunk—his cherished title and the grand old house of Dundargue would pass to a remote cousin, one who, by long residence in England, by inter-marriage there, by training, breeding, and habit of thought, cared no more for Scotland and her interests, or for the traditions of the Grahams of Aberfeldie, than for those of Timbuctoo.
Such ideas and fears had occurred to him once before, he could remember, when Allan's name appeared among the list of severely wounded in that episode of the Afghan affair, which won him the Victoria Cross.