It was no less deserted than the garden! Lights blazing, doors and windows open, but not a soul in sight; the very servants pressed into the hue-and-cry. I wandered through room after room, upstairs and down. When I went back to the terrace, it was with the crazy feeling that the world had come to an end and I alone was left... Suddenly a step on the gravel! And I do assure you that I did not know whether to scream with fear or sob with relief.
"Lady Ann!"
I was far beyond recognizing voices. I peered into the darkness until the figure of a man emerged from the shadows...
"Colonel Butler!," I cried.
"Where's Phyllida?," he asked.
"Goodness me, what have you been doing to yourself?," I exclaimed.
His clothes were in rags, he had lost his hat, he was plastered in mud from head to foot, and one arm was in some sort of make-shift sling.
"Oh, that's nothing," he said. "A fool of a girl was riding a horse she couldn't control, and, in trying not to run her down, I had to turn the car over an embankment. There was no station within reach, so I had to come here across country. I'd have wired; but, by the time I reached a telegraph-office, everything was closed—"
"But have you had no dinner?," I asked, remembering our own fate.
"I don't want any dinner till I know what's happened to Phyllida. When did she disappear? Lord Brackenbury says she was out here one moment... If any thing's happened to her—"