"My wife and Mr. Carrington! What do you mean, Miss Graham?"
Lydia explained, and Reginald Eversleigh confirmed her statement. Lady Eversleigh had left the Wizard's Cave more than an hour before the rest of the party, accompanied by Mr. Carrington.
No words can describe the consternation of Sir Oswald. He did his best to conceal his alarm; but the livid hue of his face, the ashen pallor of his lips, betrayed the intensity of his emotion. He sent out mounted grooms to search the different roads between the castle and the scene of the pic-nic; and then he left his guests without a word, and shut himself in his own apartments, to await the issue of the search.
Had any fatal accident happened to her and her companion?—or were Honoria Eversleigh and Victor Carrington two guilty creatures, who had abandoned themselves to the folly and madness of a wicked attachment, and had fled together, reckless alike of reputation and fortune?
He tried to believe that this latter chance was beyond the region of possibility; but horrible suspicions racked his brain as he paced to and fro, waiting for the issue of the search that was being made.
Better that he should be told that his wife had been found lying dead upon the hard, cruel road, than that he should hear that she had left him for another; a false and degraded creature!
"Why did she trust herself to the companionship of this man?" he asked himself. "Why did she disgrace herself by leaving her guests in the company of a young man who ought to be little more than a stranger to her? She is no ignorant or foolish girl; she has shown herself able to hold her own in the most trying positions. What madness could have possessed her, that she should bring disgrace upon herself and me by such conduct as this?"
The grooms came back after a search that had been utterly in vain. No trace of the missing lady had been discovered. Inquiries had been made everywhere along the road, but without result. No gig had been seen to pass between the neighbourhood of the Wizard's Cave and Raynham Castle.
Sir Oswald abandoned himself to despair.
There was no longer any hope: his wife had fled from him. Bitter, indeed, was the penalty which he was called upon to pay for his romantic marriage—his blind confidence in the woman who had fascinated and bewitched him. He bowed his head beneath the blow, and alone, hidden from the cruel gaze of the world, he resigned himself to his misery.