‘Gone!’ he cried, ‘gone!’ as if he could not believe his ears. ‘Have they searched the house?’ he inquired anxiously.
‘Well, sir, what’s the good o’ searching the house? She can’t be hiding upstairs,’ the women said.
Leo was not satisfied with this, however, but ran into the schoolmistress’s house with a very white and anxious face, making his way upstairs to her bedroom and into the little kitchen and every corner. He came down again and took Lady William by the arm, leading her aside. He did not even observe the scrutiny of Mab, who, full of curiosity which she herself did not understand, watched and followed them.
‘Did you see her?’ he asked anxiously.
‘See her?’ cried Lady William—‘the schoolmistress? Mrs. Brown?’
‘Then you had not found out,’ he said, ‘that she was Artémise?’
And then Mab thought that her mother would have fainted. She threw up her arms and cried: ‘Artémise!’ almost with a shriek. ‘And she has been here at my door—here—and I never knew!’
‘Mr. Leo,’ said Mab, ‘mother has been worried until she is almost ill. She has had business and all sorts of things to worry her. Why did you tell her this, whatever it means, to make her worse?’ She had drawn Lady William into a chair and stood behind her, supporting her head upon her own breast, with her arms over her mother’s shoulders like the wings of some homely angel half-fledged and not in full heavenly state.
‘Somebody must go after her,’ Lady William cried hurriedly. ‘She must not, she must not escape. Here! do you mean to say here, at my very door? And I had been told to go and see her, and Mab, my wise Mab, had made me come at last. Oh, child, why was it not yesterday—why was it not——? And Leo, to think you should never have told me. The woman that can make all right, that can save Mab’s fortune, and my—— Leo, Leo, why didn’t you tell me? Oh, Mab, why did you not make me come before to-day?’
‘I only made the discovery last night,’ he said, while she sat wringing her hands, ‘and that she should fly like this never came into my mind. I was on my way to tell you, to bring you here.’