Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/45

 34 “Mr. Lygon, sir, if you would only listen.”

“Where is your mistress?”

“In the drawing-room, sir.”

“She is not.”

“She went there, sir, directly Mrs. Lygon went out.”

“Where is Mrs. Lygon,” demanded Arthur.

“Mrs. Lygon has only gone into Paris for the evening. I thought that you would have met her at the train, but whether she went by the right bank or left bank I am not sure, and you do not know which you came from.”

“What do you say about the evening—where is she gone?”

“I—I am not sure, but Madame knows.”

Again Arthur Lygon had searched the rooms, but the result may be imagined.

“Mrs. Urquhart must be in the house,” he said, sternly, “and I must see her. Find her, Henderson.”

“But she was here ten minutes ago,” said Henderson.

“Where’s Mr. Urquhart?”

“He is away from Paris, sir, there has been a railway accident, and he was sent for.”

“Find your mistress.”

He paced the apartments in a state of mind which may need no description.

“I cannot find Mrs. Urquhart,” said Henderson, after delaying as long as she thought was safe. “I have not seen her since she said good-bye to Mrs. Lygon, and Angelique believed her to be here, as she was when you came in.”

“Has she taken flight, too?” said Lygon, in passion.

Henderson was silent, the remark not being addressed directly to her.

“Do you say that Mrs. Lygon is expected here again to-night,” he said, in a calmer voice.

Henderson, left without directions, scarcely knew what to say. If she replied in the affirmative, Mr. Lygon, evidently an unwelcome guest, would naturally desire to remain and await his wife’s return. As contrary answer would make him still more determined to see Mrs. Urquhart. So, rejecting fiction altogether, she resolved on adhering to the truth, and stating that she did not know. This left him to decide for himself.

“Bertha might well desire to keep out of the way,” he said to himself, “after what I had said to her. It would be strange if she did not. But why could she not have spoken of Laura? However, I am on her traces now, and I will not lose them again.”

He put a variety of ordinary questions to Henderson, as to the time of his wife’s arrival, the room she occupied, and her state of health, and then, dismissing the girl, he wrote a brief note to Mrs. Urquhart, in which he begged her to let him know when Laura was expected back, and her address in Paris.

“Get this into Mrs. Urquhart’s hand as soon as you can,” he said, “and if you have the answer ready for me when I call again in half an hour, this shall be doubled.” He put a gold coin into her hand as he spoke, and went out.

But Mary Henderson had no opportunity of earning the additional wage which he had offered. The sisters were fairly away from the avenue, and Bertha had led Laura through an obscure part of the town, and into a quarter where an English stranger was not at all likely to penetrate. Nor for many gold coins would Mary Henderson, under the influences which then guided her, have done anything which could offend or embarrass Mrs. Lygon.

Arthur Lygon walked rapidly hither and thither, in the neighbourhood of the house, and though irritated almost beyond bounds at the chance, as he thought, that had prevented his meeting Laura, did not entertain an idea that she was voluntarily hiding from him. The girl had played her part so naturally and promptly, that Lygon had no cause for suspicion, while the disappearance of Mrs. Urquhart was easily accounted for. But he made his half hour a short one, and soon had his hand again on the bell.

“I am sorry to say, sir, that I have not been able to find Madame. How or when she could have gone out, I cannot think, but she is certainly not in the house.”

“She must come in sooner or later,” said Lygon. “I will wait for her.”

“Very well, sir.”

“Will any one be here to dinner?”

“No, sir,” said Henderson, quickly. “Madame dined very early, with Mrs. Lygon.

“I shall wait.”

He re-entered the drawing-room, and the faithful Henderson retired to consider how this new difficulty could be met. It was evident to her mind that neither of the ladies would return to the house while they thought Mr. Lygon was there. But where could they go? and how inconvenient to have to hurry out into the miserable Versailles. Perhaps, though, they might actually have departed for Paris. But then, what was to be done with Lygon?

A brilliant thought flashed upon her mind, and in another minute she, too, had left the house.

Lygon paraded the rooms in irritation, and yet scarcely knew how to affix blame anywhere. Accident had gone against him. But it is small consolation, in trouble, to have nobody to blame.

He had passed another hour in this state of mind—which made the period seem treble its length—when Mary came in again, in haste.

“A young man, sir, has come with a message.”

“From whom?” said Arthur, eagerly.

“From Madame. Enter, Monsieur Silvain.”

Arthur Lygon had not much attention to bestow upon the small, wiry-looking, intelligent Frenchman thus introduced, but at once demanded his news.

In brief, which was not the way M. Silvain told it (for he wished to distinguish himself in the eyes of his mistress), M. Silvain had been at the railway terminus, inquiring after some perfumery which he had ordered from Paris, when Madame Urquhart, to whom he was well known, had called him to her, and had requested him immediately to present himself at her house, and acquaint the strange gentleman from England that she had gone to Paris, following the strange gentleman’s wife, and that he was, if he pleased, to come on to Paris also, and a letter should be sent to him,