But when they rounded the corner of the house and came in sight of the front door her delight changed to amazement, for there, descending from the carriage, was no chance guest, but the bridegroom of the morning, Captain Culvers himself.
III
“Impossible!” cried Lord Culvers, rubbing his forehead as if to waken his brain to something it refused to take in.
“Incredible!” echoed Lady Culvers, throwing up her hands, and standing in an attitude of amazement in the middle of the room.
“Did not return, did you say?” exclaimed Juliet, with wide-open eyes, advancing slowly, step by step, towards her cousin.
And then Captain Culvers had to tell his story all over again. It was to the effect that after waiting patiently for three-quarters of an hour for Ida’s return from her mother’s grave, he had grown slightly uneasy as to what might be detaining her, and had gone in search of her; but that, although he had found the bridal bouquet lying on the marble slab which marked the first Lady Culvers’s resting-place, Ida was nowhere to be seen. There was not a soul in sight of whom he could make enquiries, so, after scouring every corner of the churchyard in vain, he had thought it best to return, to consult with her father and friends before he took farther steps in the matter.
Assuredly a strange story this! Captain Culvers told it with more of coherence than might have been expected of a man in the circumstances. But then Captain Culvers had something of a reputation for coolness at a crisis when most other men would have lost self-control. Some ten years back news of the sudden death of his father had been brought to him as he was in the very act of taking aim at a partridge, and he had carefully brought down his bird before he had turned to the messenger for farther tidings.
But for all his calmness, his face looked white and anxious, and it was difficult to believe that he was the man who had stood, only a few hours before, in that selfsame room, receiving with triumphant pride the congratulations of his friends.
When he had finished his tale, for a moment everyone looked in everyone else’s face, saying never a word.
Clive was the first to break the silence.
All this time he had been standing a little apart from the rest, with his back to the light. Now he came forward, speaking hurriedly nervously, one might say.
“Something must have happened to her. There is no time to be lost. Search must be made in all directions before night. If you’ll allow me, Lord Culvers, I’ll go at once to the local police office.”
Perhaps Captain Culvers thought that the expression “If you’ll allow me,” ought to have been addressed to him. The frown on his face deepened.
“If there is a hue and cry to be made, it will be my business,” he said, curtly. “But it occurs to me that there may be another explanation to the affair. It is possible that Ida, with her love of fun and sensation, may be playing off some trick on me. Do you remember”—here he turned to Juliet—“what happened a month ago when you and she promised to meet me at the St. Maurs’, to join a party to Henley, and you took it into your heads to make a fool of me, and instead spent the day attending a succession of services at Westminster Abbey?”
Juliet’s reply was prevented by the entrance of a servant, with a note which he presented to Lord Culvers—an odd little twist of paper with ragged edges, that appeared to have been torn out of a pocketbook.
Lord Culvers’s hand trembled as he opened it.
“Ida’s writing!” cried Juliet, looking over her father’s shoulder.
There fell a moment of silence, and then Lord Culvers read aloud in a quaking voice:
“Do not be uneasy about me. I am with friends. I will write shortly.—Ida.”
“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed a voice, so charged with deep feeling it was scarcely possible to recognise it as the voice of Clive Redway.
Captain Culvers started, and looked at him.
Clive did not trouble to acknowledge the look. In hot haste he followed the servant out of the room, to enquire by whom the note had been brought, and getting the reply, “an Italian organ-boy,” he had set off at once, as with seven-league boots, in pursuit of the messenger.
Captain Culvers turned sharply to Juliet.
“You know something of this,” he said, his suavity of manner for the moment entirely gone.
Lord Culvers came forward in great agitation.
“Is it possible that you and Ida together can have planned this piece of folly?” he exclaimed.
Lady Culvers came forward, ostensibly in even greater agitation.
“It is all of a piece with what has been going on for the past two years,” she said, forgetting her usual dulcet tones. “Whenever one has taken a foolish idea into her head, the other, instead of helping me to reason her out of it, has joined in league against me.”
“You! you! you!” exclaimed Juliet, turning her head from one to the other, and arching her brows at each in turn. “How can you imagine such nonsense! What fun should I get out of frightening you all into fits, with Ida not here to enjoy it with me?”
The argument on her lips seemed an unanswerable one.
“No,” said Captain Culvers, slowly, “I can’t fancy you helping to organise such a piece of folly unless you expected something in the shape of fun by way of payment.”
“With friends,” said Lord Culvers, looking down on the scrap of paper which he still held in his hand; “who can those friends be, I wonder?”
“Ah,” said Lady Culvers, in a soft, sad voice, “the girls have many friends that I should not have chosen for them.”
“That goes without saying,” said Juliet, promptly and sarcastically.
Then, in succession they ran over the names of those on their visiting
