At length the alarm is serious and real, reaching fever height. Bells ring, and servants are sent in every direction. They go rushing about, no longer confining their search to the sleeping apartments, but extending it to rooms where only lumber has place—to cellars almost unexplored, garrets long unvisited, everywhere. Closet and cupboard doors are drawn open, screens dashed aside, and panels parted, with keen glances sent through the chinks. Just as in the baronial castle, and on that same night when young Lovel lost his “own fair bride.”
And while searching for their young mistress, the domestics of Llangorren Court have the romantic tale in their minds. Not one of them but knows the fine old song of the “Mistletoe Bough.” Male and female—all have heard it sung in that same house, at every Christmas-tide, under the “kissing bush,” where the pale green branch and its waxen berries were conspicuous.
It needs not the mystic memory to stimulate them to zealous exertion. Respect for their young mistress—with many of them almost adoration—is enough; and they search as if for sister, wife, or child according to their feelings and attachments.
In vain—all in vain. Though certain that no “old oak chest” inside the walls of Llangorren Court encloses a form destined to become a skeleton, they cannot find Gwen Wynn. Dead, or living, she is not in the house.
Volume Two—Chapter Fifteen.
Again the Engagement Ring.
The first hurried search, with its noisy excitement, proving fruitless, there follows an interregnum calmer with suspended activity. Indeed, Miss Linton directs it so. Now convinced that her niece has really disappeared from the place, she thinks it prudent to deliberate before proceeding further.
She has no thought that the young lady has acted otherwise than of her own will. To suppose her carried off is too absurd—a theory not to be entertained for an instant. And having gone so, the questions are, why and whither? After all, it may be, that at the ball’s departing, in the last moment when the guests were departing, moved by a mad prank, she leaped into the carriage of some lady friends, and was whirled home with them, just in the dress she had been dancing in. With such an impulsive creature as Gwen Wynn, the freak was not improbable. Nor is there any one to say nay. In the bustle and confusion of departure the other domestics were busy with their own affairs, and Gibbons sound asleep.