o answer," he said, turning to the domestic, who
was now joined by Touchwood.

Mowbray's anxiety was so great, that it prevented his taking any notice
of his guest, and he proceeded to say, without regarding his presence,
"What is to be done?--she may be sick--she may be asleep--she may have
swooned; if I force the door, it may terrify her to death in the present
weak state of her nerves.--Clara, dear Clara! do but speak a single
word, and you shall remain in your own room as long as you please."

There was no answer. Miss Mowbray's maid, hitherto too much fluttered
and alarmed to have much presence of mind, now recollected a back-stair
which communicated with her mistress's room from the garden, and
suggested she might have gone out that way.

"Gone out," said Mowbray, in great anxiety, and looking at the heavy
fog, or rather small rain, which blotted the November morning,--"Gone
out, and in weather like this!--But we may get into her room from the
back-stair."

So saying, and leaving his guest to follow or remain as he thought
proper, he flew rather than walked to the garden, and found the private
door which led into it, from the bottom of the back-stair above
mentioned, was wide open. Full of vague, but fearful apprehensions, he
rushed up to the door of his sister's apartment, which opened from her
dressing-room to the landing-place of the stair; it was ajar, and that
which communicated betwixt the bedroom and dressing-room was half open.
"Clara, Clara!" exclaimed Mowbray, invoking her name rather in an agony
of apprehension, than as any longer hoping for a reply. And his
apprehension was but too prophetic.

Miss Mowbray was not in that apartment; and, from the order in which it
was found, it was plain she had neither undressed on the preceding
night, nor occupied the bed. Mowbray struck his forehead in an agony of
remorse and fear. "I have terrified her to death," he said; "she has
fled into the woods, and perished there!"

Under the influence of this apprehension, Mowbray, after another hasty
glance around the apartment, as if to assure himself that Clara was not
there, rushed again into the dressing-room, almost overturning the
traveller, who, in civility, had not ventured to enter the inner
apartment. "You are as mad as a _Hamako_,"[II-11] said the traveller; "let
us consult together, and I am sure I can contrive"----

"Oh, d--n your contrivance!" said Mowbray, forgetting all proposed
respect in his natur