Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/701

 “She is Lady Clarice Chesney.”

Mrs. West felt excessively surprised. Like her neighbour Mrs. Lorton, she had not been brought into familiar personal contact with an earl’s daughter—except in waxwork.

“I have the honour then of speaking to—to”

“Lady Jane Chesney,” quietly replied Jane. “But when Clarice was with you she was only Miss Chesney; it is but recently that my father has come into the title. You will readily imagine that we are most anxious now to have her home, and regret more than before that she ever left it.”

“But—am I to understand that you do not know where she is?—that she has not been home since she left us last June?” exclaimed Mrs. West, in bewilderment.

“We do not know where she is. We do not know now where to look for her.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“Until to-day, I took it for granted that she was still in a situation in this neighbourhood,” explained Jane. “My father’s displeasure prevented my seeing personally after Clarice; in fact, he forbade my doing so. When I came out from home to-day I fully expected to take her back with me; or, if that could not be, to fix the time for her return. I never supposed but I should at once find her; and I cannot express to you what I felt when the proprietor of the library, where I used to address my letters to Clarice, told me Miss Beauchamp had left the neighbourhood;—what I feel still. It is not disappointment; it is a great deal worse. I begin to fear I know not what.”

“I’m sure I wish I could help you to find her!” heartily exclaimed Mrs. West. “Where can she be? She surely cannot know the change in her position!”

“I should imagine not,” replied Jane. “Unless—but no, I will not think that,” she broke off, wiping from her forehead the dew which the sudden and unwelcome thought had suddenly sent there. “Unless Clarice should have married very much beneath herself, and fears to let it be known to us,” was what she had been about to say.

“It has occurred to us sometimes that Miss Beauchamp might have taken a situation abroad; or with a family who afterwards took her abroad,” said Mrs. West. “What you say now, Lady Jane, renders it more than ever probable.”

Jane considered. It was certainly the most probable solution of the puzzle. “Yes,” she said aloud, “I think you must be right. It is more than likely that she is abroad in some remote continental city. Thank you for your courtesy in giving me this information,” she added, as she rose and laid a card on the table with her address upon it. “Should you at any time obtain further news, however slight, you will, I am sure, be kind enough to forward it to me.”

Mrs. West gave a promise, and Jane went out to her carriage with a heavy heart. It was a most unsatisfactory story to carry back to Lord Oakburn.

Another carriage, with its hammer-cloth and its coronets and its attendant servants, and above all, its coat of arms, that of the Oakburn family, was at the door in Portland Place when Jane’s drew up. It was Lady Oakburn’s. Jane went into the hall, and sounds as of voices in dispute came from the room where she had left her father in the morning. The earl and his old dowager aunt were enjoying one of their frequent differences of opinion.

Lucy came running down the stairs. “Have you come back to take me out, Jane?”

Jane stooped to kiss her. “My dear, you know that I never willingly break a promise,” she said, “but I almost fear that I must break mine to you to-day. I am not sure that I can go to the botanical fête. I have heard bad news, Lucy; and I shall have to tell it to papa in the best way that I can. But, if I don’t take you to-day, I will take you some other day.”

“What is the bad news?” asked the child with all a child’s open curiosity.

“I cannot tell it you now, Lucy. You go back to Miss Lethwait. How long has Aunt Oakburn been here?”

“Ever so long,” was Lucy’s lucid answer. “She is quarrelling with papa about Clarice.”

“About Clarice!” involuntarily repeated Jane. “What about Clarice?”

“I was in the room with papa and Miss Lethwait when Aunt Oakburn came”

“What took you and Miss Lethwait to it?” interupted Jane.

“We went in to get those drawings; we did not know papa was there; and he kept us talking, and then Lady Oakburn came in. Jane, she looked so angry with papa, and she never said Good morning to him, or How do you do, or anything, but she asked him whether he was not ashamed of himself to let Clarice be abroad still as a governess; and then they began to quarrel, and Miss Lethwait brought me away.”

“How strange that they should be all suddenly wanting to bring home Clarice when we cannot find her!” thought Jane.

She motioned Lucy up-stairs to the study, and entered the drawing-room. Lord Oakburn stood in the middle of the floor, his tongue