looking in mute wonder at her
pale, scared face.

"Ronald," she said, "Beatrice has not slept in her room all night. We
can not find her."

He smiled at first, thinking, as she had done, that there must be some
mistake, and that his mother was fanciful and nervous; but, when Lady
Helena, in quick, hurried words, told him of the unfastened door and
the ribbon, his face grew serious. He took the ribbon from the maid's
hand--it seemed a living part of his daughter. He remembered that he
had seen it the night before on her dress, when he had held up the
beautiful face to kiss it. He had touched that same ribbon with his
face.

"She may have gone out into the grounds, and have been taken ill," he
said. "Do not frighten Airlie, mother; I will look round myself."

He went through every room of the house one by one, but there was no
trace of her. Still Lord Earle had no fear; it seemed so utterly
impossible that any harm could have happened to her.

Then he went out into the grounds, half expecting the beautiful face to
smile upon him from under the shade of her favorite trees. He called
aloud, "Beatrice!" The wind rustled through the trees, the birds sang,
but there came no answer to his cry. Neither in the grounds nor in the
garden could he discover any trace of her. He returned to Lady Helena,
a vague fear coming over him.

"I can not find her," he said. "Mother, I do not understand this. She
can not have left us. She was not unhappy--my beautiful child."

There was no slip of paper, no letter, no clew to her absence. Mother
and son looked blankly at each other.

"Ronald," she cried, "where is she? Where is the poor child?"

He tried to comfort her, but fear was rapidly mastering him.

"Let me see if Airlie can suggest anything," he said.

They went down to the breakfast room where Lord Airlie still waited for
the young girl he was never more to meet alive. He turned round with a
smile, and asked if Beatrice were coming. The smile died from his lips
when he saw the pale, anxious faces of mother and son.

"Hubert," said Lord Earle, "we are alarmed--let us hope without cause.
Beatrice can not be found. My mother is frightened." Lady Helena had
sunk, pale and trembling, upon a couch. Lord Airlie looked bewildered.
Lord Earle told him briefly how they had missed her, and what had been
done.

"She must be trying to frighten us," he said; "she must have hidden
herself. There can not be anything wro