'If they don't, they'll be likely to get caught,' said Robert, exploring the clouds with the sagacious eyes of a rustic observer schooled by long experience to read signs and tokens in the heavens. 'There'll be a storm, I'm afeard, before dinner-time.'

Dinner-time with Robert meant the hour of the sun's meridian, which he took to be the universal and legitimate dinner-hour for all mankind, designed so to be from the creation.

'How soon can you have the horses ready?'

'In a quarter of an hour, ma'am.'

Ida flew upstairs, meeting her step-mother on the way. Lady Palliser had gone to her son's room as soon as she left her own--her custom always; and on missing the boy, had made instant inquiries as to his whereabouts, and had already taken fright.

'Oh, Ida, if that dreadful husband of yours should lure him into some lonely place, and kill him! My boy, my beloved, my lovely boy!'

'Dear mother, be reasonable. Brian would not hurt a hair of his head.

Brian loves him,' urged Ida soothingly, yet with a torturing pain at her heart, remembering Brian's delirious raving last night.

'What will not a madman do? Who can tell what he will do?' cried Lady Palliser, wringing her hands.

'Trust in G.o.d, mother; no harm will come to our boy. No harm shall come to him--except perhaps a wetting. Get warm clothes ready for him against I bring him home. I am going to ride after him,' said Ida, hurrying off to her room.

In less than ten minutes she had put on her habit, and was in the stable yard; and three minutes afterwards f.a.n.n.y Palliser, roaming up and down and round about her son's room like a perturbed spirit, heard the clatter of hoofs, and saw her stepdaughter ride out of the yard attended by Robert, the best and kindest of grooms, and devoted to his young master.

Lady Palliser went downstairs, and again interrogated the housemaid who had witnessed Sir Vernou's departure. 'How had Mr. Wendover seemed?' she asked--'good-tempered, and pleasant, and quiet?'

Very good-tempered, and very pleasant, the girl told her, but not quiet; he talked and laughed a great deal, and seemed full of fun, but in a great hurry.

The mother remembered how many a time her boy and Brian Wendover had been out together, and tried to put away fear. After all, Brian was a nice fellow--he had always made himself agreeable to her. It was only of late that he had become fitful and strange in his ways. She had seen such a case before in her own family, her own flesh and blood, her mother's only brother. That victim to his own vice had been elderly at the time she knew him--a chronic sufferer. She but too well remembered his tottering knees, and restless, tremulous feet: those painful morning hours when he shook like an aspen leaf: those dreadful nights, when he sat cowering over the fire, glancing askant over his shoulder every now and then, haunted by phantoms, hearing and replying to imaginary voices, striving with restless, shivering hands to rid himself of imaginary vermin. He had been mad enough at times in all conscience, as mad as any lunatic in Bedlam; but he had never tried to injure any one but himself. Once they found him with an open razor, possibly contemplating suicide; but he abandoned the idea meekly enough when surprised by his friends, and explained himself with one of those lies with which his tremulous tongue was every so ready.

Arguing with herself by the light of past experience, that after all this drink-madness was a disease apart, seldom culminating in actual violence, Lady Palliser sat down before her silver urn, and made believe to breakfast, in solitary state, thinking as she poured out her tea how very little all these grand things upon the table could help or comfort one in the hour of trouble. Nay, in such times of misfortune, the little sitting-room of her childhood, the round table and shabby old chairs, the kettle on the hob, and the cat upon the hearth, had seemed to possess an element of sympathy and comfort entirely wanting in this s.p.a.cious formal dining-room, with its perpetual repet.i.tion of straight lines, and its chilling distances.

Ida rode through the park, and across the common, and round the base of Blackman's Hanger, as fast as her clever mare could carry her with any degree of comfort to either. The clever mare was somewhat skittish from want of work, and inclined to show her cleverness by shying at every stray rabbit, or crocodile-shaped excrescence in the way of fallen timber, lying within her range of vision; but Ida was too anxious to be disconcerted by any such small surprises, and rode on without drawing rein to the banks of the trout-stream which wound its silvery way through the valley on the other side of Blackman's Hanger. If they could have crossed the hill, the distance would have been lessened by at least two-thirds, but the steep was much to sheer for any horse to mount, and Ida had to circ.u.mnavigate the wooded promontory, which narrowed and dwindled to a furzy ridge at the edge of the river. Once in the valley her way was easy, with only here and there a low hedge for the mare to jump, just enough to put her in good spirits. But after riding for about seven miles along the bank of the stream, Ida pulled up in despair, to ask Robert where next she must look for his master. It was evident this was the wrong scent.

'They'd hardly have come further nor this within the time,' Robert admitted, with a rueful look at the lather on Cleopatra's dark brown neck and shoulder; 'and this is further nor ever I come with Sir Vernon. We must try somewheres else, ma'am.

And so they turned, and at Robert's direction Ida rode off, this time at a walking pace, for another of Vernon's happy hunting grounds.

A sudden ray of hope occurred to her as they returned by the base of Blackman's Hanger. What if Vernon should have taken Brian to Cheap Jack's cottage, to have introduced him to that gifted misanthrope, who, among his other accomplishments, had a talent for repairing fishing tackle?

Moved by this hope, Ida dismounted, and gave Cleopatra's bridle to Robert, who was on his feet almost as soon as his mistress.

'Let the mare rest for a little while, Robert,' she said;' I am going up to the top of the hill to see the pedlar--Sir Vernon may have been with him this morning.'

'Not unlikely, ma'am--he be a rare favourite with Sir Vernon.'

'I hope he's a respectable person.'

'Oh, I think the chap's honest enough,' answered the groom, with a patronising air; 'but he's a queer customer--a reg'lar Peter the wild boy, he is.'

Ida, who had never heard of this gentleman, was not particularly enlightened by the comparison. She went lightly and quickly up the steep ascent, and along a furzy ridge which rose imperceptibly skywards, until she came to the fir plantation which sheltered the gamekeeper's cottage.

The lattice stood wide open, and a man was leaning with folded arms on the sill as she came in sight, but in a flash the man had gone, and the lattice was closed.

She ran on, nothing deterred by this discourtesy, and knocked at the door with the handle of her whip.

'Is my brother, Sir Vernon Palliser, here?' she asked.

'No,' a gruff voice answered from within.

'Please open the door, 'I want to ask your advice. The boy has wandered off on a fishing expedition. Have you seen anything of him this morning?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?'

'Do you think I should tell you a lie?' growled the sulky voice from within.

'What a surly brute!' thought Ida. 'How can Vernon like to make a companion of such a man?'

She lingered, only half convinced, and nervously repeated her story--how Sir Vernon had gone out with Mr. Wendover that morning before seven, and how she had been looking for them, and was afraid they would be caught in the storm which was evidently coming.

'You'd better go home before you're half drowned yourself,' growled the surly voice. 'I'll look for the boy and send him home to you, if he's above ground.'

'Will you I will you really look for him?' faltered Ida, in a rapture of grat.i.tude. 'You know his ways, and he is so fond of you. Pray find him, and bring him home. You shall be liberally rewarded. We shall be deeply grateful,' she added hastily, fearing she had offended by this suggestion of sordid recompense.

'I'll do my best,' grumbled the woman-hater, 'when you've cleared off. I shan't stir till you're gone.'

'I am going this instant, my horse is at the bottom of the Hanger. G.o.d bless you for your goodness to my brother.'

'G.o.d bless you,' replied the voice in a deeper and less strident tone.

Big drops were falling slowly and far apart from the lowering sky as Ida went down the hill, a steep and even dangerous descent for feet less accustomed to that kind of ground.

'You'd better ride home as fast as you can, ma'am,' said Robert, as he mounted Cleopatra's light burden. 'The mare's had a good blow, and you can canter her all the way back.'

'I don't care about the storm for myself. Sir Vernon must be out in it.'

A low muttering peal of thunder rolled slowly along the valley as she settled herself in her saddle.

'Sir Vernon won't hurt, ma'am. Besides, who knows if he ain't at home by this time?'

There was comfort in this suggestion; but after a smart ride home, under a drenching shower diversified by thunder and lightning, Ida found Lady Palliser waiting for her in the portico. There had been no tidings of the boy. Two of the gardeners had been despatched in quest of him--each provided with a mackintosh and an umbrella; and now the mother, no longer apprehensive of homicidal mania on the part of Brian, was tortured by her fear of the fury of the elements, the pitiless rain which might give her boy rheumatic fever, lightnings which might strike him with blindness or death, rivers which might heave themselves above their banks to drown him, trees which might wrench themselves up from their roots on purpose to tumble on him. Lady Palliser always took the catastrophic view of nature when she thought of her boy.

Luncheon was out of the question for either Ida or her stepmother. They went into the dinning-room when the gong sounded, and each was affectionately anxious that the other should take some refreshment; but they could do nothing except watch the storm, the fine old trees bending to the tempest, the darkly lurid sky brooding over the earth, thick sheets of rain, driven across the foregound, and almost shutting out the distant woods and hills. The two women stood silently watching that unfriendly sky, and listened for every footstep in the hall, in the fond hope of the boy's return. And then they tried to comfort, each other with the idea that he was under cover somewhere, at some village inn, eating a homely meal of bread and cheese happy and cheery as a bird, perhaps, while they were so miserable about him.

'I have an idea that Cheap Jack will find them,' said Ida by-and-by.

'Vernon says he is such a clever fellow; and a rover like that would know every inch of the country.'

The day wore on; the storm rolled away towards other hills; and woods; and a rent in the dun-coloured clouds showed the bright blue above them.

Soon all the heaven was clear, and the wet gra.s.s was shining in the afternoon sunlight.

One of the messengers now returned with the useless mackintosh. He had been able to hear nothing of Sir Vernon and his companion. He had been at Wimperfield village, and through two other villages, and had taken a circuitous way back by another meadow-stream, where there might be a hope of trout; but he had seen no trace of the missing boy. The field labourers he had met had been able to give him no information.