Chapter IV: Suspense

Lord Aberfeldie drove home in some alarm and dismay. Allan was not at Loganlee, nor had he been near it! When Ruby, the amber-haired little beauty, heard of his visit and its object, she was not slow to connect Allan's second disappearance with some lover's quarrel between him and Olive, and to gather certain jealous and pleasant hopes therefrom, for Allan was decidedly 'a weakness' of Ruby's.

Uncertainty and suspense were increasing now in all their minute horror at Dundargue; while surmises proved endless, futile, and unavailing.

He was gone--but where, or how, and why?

'Something has happened--something fatal--to my son!' wailed Lady Aberfeldie. 'Give me back those fatal diamonds, Eveline. They are never worn, that sorrow does not come to Dundargue!'

'Take courage, my lady,' said old Tappleton, the butler; 'ill news aye travels fast enough, and if ought was wrang wi' the Master, we should hae heard o't ere now.'

Evan Cameron, now with his regiment, and the legal agents of the family at Edinburgh, were alike perplexed on the receipt of letters from Lord Aberfeldie inquiring anxiously if they knew anything of the movements of Allan, and both telegraphed back that they could give no information on the subject.

With these telegrams the last hope passed away, and when the third day of his disappearance began to close a kind of horror seemed to settle over the household, and again a general, and, of course, unavailing, search was made through the entire neighbourhood.

On the face of the servants, male and female, there was never a smile now, as they all loved Allan well; it was no assumed expression they wore; but they went about their daily work with a hushed and subdued air as if there was death in the house, and they fully felt the weight of the mystery.

And ever at table stood the vacant chair, while covers were laid as usual for the absent one.

An accident must have happened; but of what nature? Lord Aberfeldie was beginning to think grimly, vaguely, and painfully of the future. If aught fatal had happened to Allan--his only son--an idea from which his soul shrunk--his cherished title and the grand old house of Dundargue would pass to a remote cousin, one who, by long residence in England, by inter-marriage there, by training, breeding, and habit of thought, cared no more for Scotland and her interests, or for the traditions of the Grahams of Aberfeldie, than for those of Timbuctoo.

Such ideas and fears had occurred to him once before, he could remember, when Allan's name appeared among the list of severely wounded in that episode of the Afghan affair, which won him the Victoria Cross.

To Lady Aberfeldie, such ideas, if they occurred at all, were minor indeed to the memories of Allan as the babe she had nursed in her bosom, and the curly-haired boy who had prattled at her knee; and on whom, in manhood and his prime, she had gazed with such maternal pride and admiration when she saw him with the tartan and plumed bonnet, in all the bravery of the Black Watch.

As for poor Olive and Eveline they could only weep together from time to time in all the girlish abandonment of woe.

So hour by hour the silent time stole on at Dundargue.

Till now Olive had never known how deeply and truly she loved Allan, of the hold his image had upon her heart; and how she had repented the pain her petulance must have cost him.

Her eyes in the morning light looked weary, and yet there was an unnatural sparkle in that weariness; her rich brown hair, to the dismay of Mademoiselle Clairette, was left almost undressed, and was pushed back from her throbbing temples; her lips, though scarlet still, looked hard, dry, and cracked, while the whole expression of her face seemed changed.

What was to be the clue, if ever there would be one, to this dreadful mystery!

Meanwhile it might be inquired by the reader whether Mr. Hawke Holcroft was troubled by his conscience. He certainly never betrayed any outward signs thereof--though conscience has been described as making cowards of us all--but he was not without certain reasonable and wholesome fears of discovery and connection of the crime with himself.

He was far away from Dundargue and all its influences. In fact, it seemed a kind of dream to him the circumstance of ever having been there at all; and as weeks passed on nothing could exceed his perplexity and astonishment, though located in an obscure corner of London to avoid his creditors and, _pro tem._, everyone else, to hear nothing of the affair at Dundargue or of the Master being missing.

Sedulously he searched the daily prints, sedulously he watched the sensational portions of the evening third and fourth editions, but the matter was never referred to. No advertisements appeared offering rewards; no detectives, or the usual machinery seemed to have been put in motion. What could it all mean--this silence and mystery?

Everything however trivial finds its way into print now, and the son of a peer--and an officer in Her Majesty's service, too--does not vanish every day!

At last he got a shock, when a poster proclaimed in large capitals '_The mysterious outrage at Dun--_' but his sight failed him for a moment, and when again he looked he perceived that it was not Dundargue, but 'Dunecht,' that was mentioned with reference to the affair of a past time.

But in all this we are somewhat anticipating.