"I must go out," he said; "a sad, a terribly sad thing is supposed to have happened."
"Where? Any of our people?" exclaimed his wife.
Mr. Lauriston hesitated—he glanced at the two stranger ladies—at the elder one especially—the lady Tib and I had seen from the Rectory gate.
"You must hear it sooner or later," he said; "I'm very sorry to have to tell it. It is at—at Rosebuds—the children there, poor Gerald's children—are missing, and it is feared they have fallen into the pits—near—near your house, Mrs. Mowbray. They have sent to me for the things to drag with." (There was a pond almost big enough to be called a little lake in the Rectory grounds: that was how they had ropes there.)
Mrs. Mowbray gave a scream.
"The children—drowned!" she cried in an agony. "Oh, Edith! oh, William! if it is so, it is my fault. I should not have left these pits to be filled up by Farmer Jackman when he buys the place. The moment I knew the children were at Rosebuds, I should have done it. Oh God! it is too awful, and too cruel—just when I was beginning, faintly beginning, to hope."
She seemed as if she were going to faint. But her daughter, our Regina, our dear fairy, darted from the room, calling out as she did so—
"Wait a moment, dear mamma. Don't be so miserable. It may be a mistake."
She rushed to the hall, where stood the Rectory servants in a group, and Barstow, grandpapa's very spruce, stuck-up London groom, who had come to ask for the ropes, with a very solemn face, but very proud, all the same, to be the centre of information. Regina seized hold of him by the coat collar, I believe; he told nurse afterwards that the young lady shook him, shook him hard, "as if it was all my fault," he said to nurse.
"Leave off chattering and gossiping," she said, for our princess can be very determined when she likes, "and attend to me. Are the children known to be in the pool? Were they seen near there? or heard? or how is it?"