As he read these lines Lord Marlow’s cheeks lost some of their ruddy colour. He allowed his wife to twitch the paper out of his hand, stammering: “Impossible! I do not credit it! P-pray, where could they have gone?”

“Exactly! Where?” demanded Mrs. Orde. “That question is what brings me here! If my husband were not in Bristol at this moment—but so it is always! Whenever a man is most needed he is never to be found!”

“I do not know what this message means,” announced Lady Marlow. “I do not pretend to understand it. For my part I strongly suspect Mr. Thomas Orde to have been inebriated when he wrote it.”

“How dare you?” flashed Mrs. Orde, her eyes sparkling dangerously.

“No, no, of course he was not!” interposed Lord Marlow hurriedly. “My love, let me beg of you—Not but what it is so extraordinary that—Though far be it from me to suggest—”

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Orde, stamping her foot, “don’t stand there in that addle-brained fashion, saying nothing to the purpose, my lord! Is it nothing to you that your daughter is at this very moment eloping? You must go after her! Discover where she meant to go! Surely Susan might know! Or Miss Battery! She may have let fall a hint—or one of them, better acquainted with her than you, might guess!”

Lady Marlow was inclined to brush this suggestion aside, but her lord, the memory of his overnight interview with Phoebe lively in his mind, was by this time seriously alarmed. He said at once that Susan and Miss Battery should be sent for, and hastened to the door, shouting to Firbank. While a message was carried up to the schoolroom, Mrs. Orde at once relieved her overcharged nerves and paid off every arrear of a debt of rancour that had been mounting in her bosom for years by telling Lady Marlow exactly what she thought of her manners, conduct, insensibility, and gross stupidity. Lord Marlow was inevitably drawn into the altercation; and in the heat of battle Sylvester’s presence was forgotten. He did nothing to attract attention to himself. The moment for that had not yet come, though he had every hope that it was not far distant. Meanwhile he listened to Mrs. Orde’s masterly indictment of his hostess, gratefully storing up in his memory the several anecdotes illustrative of Lady Marlow’s depravity, every detail of which Mrs. Orde had faithfully carried in her mind for years past.

She was silenced at last by the entrance into the room of Miss Battery, accompanied not only by Susan but by Eliza as well. To this circumstance Lady Marlow took instant and pardonable exception; but when she would have dismissed her Miss Battery said grimly: “I thought it my duty to bring her to your ladyship. She says she knows where her sister has gone. Don’t think it, myself.”

“Phoebe would never tell Eliza!” asserted Susan. “And particularly when she never breathed a word to me!”

“I do know where she has gone!” said Eliza. “And I was going to tell Mama, because it is my duty to do so.”

“Yes, well, never mind that!” said Lord Marlow testily. “If you know, tell me at once!”

“She has gone to Gretna Green with Tom Orde, Papa,” said Eliza.

The tone in which she uttered this staggering information was so smug that it goaded Susan into exclaiming impetuously: “I know that’s a rapper, you odious little mischief-maker, you!”

“Susan, you will go to my dressing-room and remain there until I come to you!” said Lady Marlow.

But greatly to her surprise Lord Marlow came to Susan’s rescue. “No, no, this matter must be sifted! It’s my belief Sukey is in the right of it.”

“Mine too,” interpolated Miss Battery.

“Eliza is a very truthful child,” stated Lady Marlow.

“How do you know she is gone to Gretna Green?” demanded Mrs. Orde. “Did she tell you so?”

“Oh, no, ma’am!” said Eliza, looking so innocent that Susan’s hand itched to slap her. “I think it was a secret between her and Tom, and it had made me very unhappy, because it is wrong to have secrets from Mama and Papa, isn’t it, Mama?”

“Very wrong indeed, my dear,” corroborated Lady Marlow graciously. “I am glad to know that one at least of my daughters feels as she ought.”

“Yes, very likely,” said Lord Marlow without any marked display of enthusiasm, “but how do you come to know this, girl?”

“Well, Papa, I don’t like to tell tales of my sister, but Tom came to see her last night.”

“Came to see her last night? When?”

“I don’t know, Papa. It was very late, I think, because I was fast asleep.”

“Then you couldn’t have known anything about it!” interrupted Susan.

“Be silent, Susan!” commanded Lady Marlow.

“I woke up,” explained Eliza. “I heard people talking in the morning-room, and I thought it was robbers, so I got up, because it was my duty to tell Papa, so that he could—”

“Oh, you wicked, untruthful brat!” gasped Susan. “If you had thought that you would have put your head under the blankets in a quake of fright!”

“Am I to speak to you again, Susan?” demanded Lady Marlow.

“Perfectly true,” said Miss Battery. “Never had such an idea in her head. Not at all courageous. Got up out of curiosity.”

“Oh, what does it signify?” cried Mrs. Orde. “Tom must have come to see Phoebe on his way home last night, that much is certain! You heard them talking in the morning-room, did you, Lizzy? What did they say?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. Only that just as I was about to run to find Papa I heard Tom speak, quite loud, so I knew it wasn’t house-breakers. He said he hoped there wouldn’t be snow in the north, because it must be Gretna Green.”

“Good God!” ejaculated Lord Marlow. “The young—And what had Phoebe to say to that, pray?”

“She told him not to speak so loud, Papa, and then I heard no more, for I went back to bed.”

“Yes, because try as you might you couldn’t hear any more!” said Susan.

“You behaved very properly,” said Lady Marlow. “If your sister is saved from the dreadful consequences of her conduct she will owe it to your sense of duty. I am excessively pleased with you, Eliza.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” said Miss Battery, “I should like to know why Eliza’s sense of duty didn’t prompt her to come immediately to my bedchamber to inform me of what was going forward! Don’t scruple to tell you, ma’am, that I don’t think there’s a word of truth in the story.”

“Yes, by God!” said Lord Marlow, kindling. “So should I like to know that! Why didn’t you rouse Miss Battery immediately, Eliza? Susan’s right! You made up the whole story, didn’t you? Eh? Answer me!”

“I didn’t! Oh, Mama, I didn’t!” declared Eliza, beginning to cry.

“Good gracious, my lord!” cried Mrs. Orde. “I should hope that it would be beyond the power of a child of her age to imagine such a tale! Pray, what should she know of Gretna Green? I do not doubt her: indeed, the terrible suspicion had already crossed my mind! What else can we think, in face of what my son wrote? If he felt himself obliged to rescue her, how could he do so except by marrying her? And where could he do that, being under age, except across the Border? I beg of you—I implore you, sir!—to go after them!”

“Go after them!” ejaculated his lordship, his face alarmingly suffused with colour. “I should rather think so, ma’am! Implore me, indeed! Let me tell you you have no need to do that! My daughter to be running off to Gretna Green like any—Oh, let the pair of them but wait until I catch up with them!”

“Well, they won’t do that!” said Mrs. Orde, with some asperity. “And if you do catch them (which I don’t consider certain, for you may depend upon it they have several hours’ start of you, and will stay away from the post roads for as far as they may) you will be so good as to remember, sir, that my son is little more than a schoolboy, and has acted, I don’t question, from motives of the purest chivalry!”

At this point, perceiving that his host, having forgotten all about him, was preparing to storm out of the room, Sylvester judged it to be time to make his presence felt. Coming back into the centre of the room, he said soothingly: “Oh, I should think he would catch them quite easily, ma’am! The strongest probability is that they will run into a snow-drift. I believe it has been snowing for several days in the north. My dear Lord Marlow, before you set out in pursuit of the runaways you must allow me to take my leave of you. In such circumstances I daresay you and her ladyship must be wishing me at Jericho. Accept my thanks for your agreeable hospitality, my regret for its unavoidable curtailment, and my assurance—I trust unnecessary!—that you may rely upon my discretion. It remains only for me to wish you speedy success in your mission, and to beg that you will not delay your departure on my account.”

With these words, delivered very much in the grand manner, he shook hands with Lady Marlow, executed two slight bows to Mrs. Orde and Miss Battery, and was gone from the room before his host had collected his wits enough to do more than utter a half-hearted protest.

His valet, a very correct gentleman’s gentleman, received the news of his immediate departure from Austerby with a deferential bow and an impassive countenance; John Keighley, suffering all the discomfort of a severe cold in his head, bluntly protested. “We’ll never reach London, your grace, not with the roads in the state they’re in, by all accounts.”

“I daresay we shan’t,” replied Sylvester. “But do you think I can’t reach Speenhamland? I’ll prove you wrong!”

Swale, already folding one of Sylvester’s coats, heard this magical word with relief. Speenhamland meant the Pelican, a hostelry as famous for the excellence of its accommodation as for the extortionate nature of its charges. Far better entertainment would be found there than at Austerby, as well for his grace’s servants as for his grace himself.