Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/702

 and his stick keeping up a duet; and the dowager—her black bonnet all awry, her shawl thrown on a neighbouring chair, and her cheeks in a flame—was talking quite as angrily and more loudly than the earl. They had strayed however from the first point in dispute—Clarice; had entered, in fact, upon at least a dozen others; just now the point of debate was the letting of Chesney Oaks, which had been finally taken by Sir James Marden.

Jane’s entrance put an end to the fray. The earl dropped his voice, and Lady Oakburn pulled her bonnet straight upon her head. These personal encounters were in truth so frequent between the two, that neither retained much animosity afterwards, or indeed much recollection of what the particular grievance had been, or the hard compliments they had mutually paid.

“Well, and where is she?” began the earl to Jane.

Jane knew only too well to whom he alluded. The presence of the dowager made her task all the more difficult; but she might not dare to temporise with her father, or hide the fact that Clarice could not be found. She did not however reply instantly, and the earl spoke again.

“Have you brought her back with you?”

“No, papa. I”

“Then I’ll have the law of the people!” thundered the earl, working his stick ominously. “Here’s your aunt come down now with her orders about Clarice,”—with a fierce flourish towards the angry old lady. “As if I did not know how to conduct my own affairs as well as any interference can tell me!”

“No, you don’t, Oakburn, You don’t!”

“And as if I should not conduct them as I please without reference to interference,” continued the earl aggravatingly. “She’s my daughter, madam; she’s not yours.”

“Then why didn’t you prevent her going out at all? why didn’t you drag her back with cords?” retorted the dowager, nodding her bonnet at her adversary. “I would; and I have told you so ten times. What does Clarice say for herself?” she added, turning sharply upon Jane. “Why didn’t she come home of her own accord, without waiting to be sent for? She has got the Chesney temper, and that’s an obstinate one. That’s what it is.”

" Aunt,” said Jane, faintly,—“papa,” she said, scarcely knowing which of them to address, or how to frame her news, “I am sorry to say that I cannot find Clarice. She—I—"

They both interrupted her in a breath, turning their anger upon Jane. What did she mean by “not finding” Clarice, when she had said all along that she knew where she was?

Poor Jane had to explain. That she had thought she knew where Clarice was; but that Clarice was gone: she had been gone ever since last June. Bit by bit the whole tale was extracted from Jane; the mystery of Clarice’s leaving Mrs. West’s so suddenly (and it really did look something of a mystery), and her never having been heard of since.

To describe the earl’s dismay would be a difficult task. When he fully comprehended that Clarice was lost—lost, for all that could be seen at present—his temper gave way prodigiously. He stormed, he thumped, he talked, he abused the scape-goat Pompey, who had had nothing in the world to do with it, but who happened unluckily to come into the room with an announcement that luncheon was ready; he abused Lady Oakburn, he abused Jane. For once in her life the dowager let him go on to his heart’s content without retorting in kind: she had in truth her grand-nieces’ welfare at heart, and the news Jane had brought terrified her. Lunch! No; they were in too much perplexity, too much real care, to sit down to a luncheon table.

“I have contained myself as long as I could,” cried the dowager, flinging back the strings of her bonnet, and darting reproachful looks at Lord Oakburn. “Every week since you came to London have I said to myself on the Monday morning, He’ll have her back this week; but that week has gone on like the others, and he has not had her back—you, Oakburn!—and I said to myself, as I sat down to my breakfast this day, I’ll go and ask him what he thinks of himself. And I’m come. Now then, Oakburn!”

Poor Jane, utterly powerless to stem the raging spirits of the two, remembered that Lady Oakburn had been as ready as the earl to leave Clarice to herself: to say that she ought to be left to herself, unsought, until she should “come to her senses.”

“I want Clarice,” continued the dowager, while the earl marched to and fro in the room, brandishing his stick. “I am going away next month to Switzerland, and I’ll take her with me, if she behaves herself and shows proper contrition for what she has done. As to your not finding her, Jane, that must be nonsense; you always were good for nothing, you know.”

“Dear aunt, the case is this,” said Jane, in sadly subdued tone. “Perhaps you do not quite understand it all. I should not think so much of Clarice’s not having been, or sent, to Mrs. West’s since she left them; but what I do think strange is, that she should not have called or sent as usual for my letters. All the letters I have written to her since Christmas,