"Poor soul! He told me she fancied she was some great, rich lady. A pity she is so wild-like. So lovely as she is, too, and might be such a pride to her handsome husband."
Countess Vera turns away her head with a heart-wrung cry.
"Oh, may God forgive you, woman, for lending yourself to this wicked conspiracy against a wronged girl! Surely He who reigns above will send me safe deliverance from my prison-house."
"Poor, pretty creature, raving mad, that she is," comments stupid, yet kind-hearted Betsy Robson.
[CHAPTER XLI.]
The utmost dismay and horror settled down upon the household at Fairvale Park when it was found that every trace of Lady Vera's whereabouts was swallowed up in impenetrable darkness and mystery.
Sir Harry and Lady Clive believed that Mrs. Cleveland was the guilty party who had decoyed her from her home, and they foreboded that the too-confiding girl had been murdered in cold blood by her ruthless foe. Little Hal's story of the woman who had given him the note for Lady Vera in the wood confirmed them in their first suspicions, and they bitterly bewailed Lady Vera's mistaken clemency in letting her would-be murderess go free that night in London.
But when Colonel Lockhart came down from London that evening in response to their telegram, though he was almost distracted by this new and crushing blow to his happiness, the quick instinct of love turned his suspicions unerringly to the truth.
"It is not Mrs. Cleveland who has abducted Lady Vera. I cannot believe it for an instant. She would not have ventured on such a course," he says, decidedly; "Leslie Noble is the guilty party."