"You would have heard—you would have known," echoed her husband, with brutal mockery—"by instinct, by second sight, by animal magnetism, I suppose. You are just the sort of woman to believe in that kind of rot."
The valet had gone across the yard on his way round to the offices of the house. Christabel made no reply to her husband's sneering speech, but went straight to the hall, and rang for the butler.
"Have you—has any one seen Mr. Hamleigh come back to the house?" she asked.
"No, ma'am."
"Inquire, if you please, of every one. Make quite sure that he has not returned, and then let three or four men, with Nicholls at their head, go down to St. Nectan's Kieve and look for him. I'm afraid there has been an accident."
"I hope not, ma'am," answered the butler, who had known Christabel from her babyhood, who had looked on, a pleased spectator, at Mr. Hamleigh's wooing, and whose heart was melted with tenderest compassion to-day at the sight of her pallid face, and eyes made large with terror. "It's a dangerous kind of place for a stranger to go clambering about with a gun, but not for one that knows every stone of it, as Mr. Hamleigh do."
"Send, and at once, please. I do not think Mr. Hamleigh, having arranged for the dog-cart to meet him, would forget his appointment."
"There's no knowing, ma'am. Some gentlemen are so wrapt up in their sport."
Christabel sat down in the hall, and waited while Daniel, the butler, made his inquiries. No one had seen Mr. Hamleigh come in, and everybody was ready to aver on oath if necessary that he had not returned. So Nicholls, the chief coachman, a man of gumption and of much renown in the household, as a person whose natural sharpness had been improved by the large responsibilities involved in a well-filled stable, was brought to receive his orders from Mrs. Tregonell. Daniel admired the calm gravity with which she gave the man his instructions, despite her colourless cheek and the look of pain in every feature of her face.
"You will take two or three of the stablemen with you, and go as fast as you can to the Kieve. You had better go in the light cart, and it would be as well to take a mattress, and some pillows. If—if there should have been an accident those might be useful. Mr. Hamleigh left the house early this morning with his gun to go to the Kieve, and he was to have met the dog-cart at eleven. Baker waited at the gate till twelve—but perhaps you have heard."