The Unseen Bridgegroom by May Agnes Fleming (best free ebook reader .TXT) 📖

hour ago, and came here at once. Do you believe it?"

"How can I tell? Let us hope it may be true. It is of a piece with the rest of the mystery. The writing, as usual in these anonymous letters, is disguised. Can Mollie herself be the writer?"

"Mollie!" The baronet grew fearfully pale at the bare suggestion. "Why on earth should my affianced wife write like that? Don't you see it say a there, 'She will never be your wife?' Mollie, my bride, would never say that."

Mr. Walraven was not so sure, but he did not say so. He had very little faith in Miss Dane's stability, even in a matter of this kind.

"It is the work of some enemy," said Sir Roger, "and, as such, to be disregarded. Like all anonymous letters, it is only worthy of contempt."

People always say that of anonymous communications; but the anonymous communications invariably have their effect, notwithstanding.

"I will continue my search," pursued Sir Roger, firmly. "I will offer yet higher rewards. I will employ still more detectives. I will place this letter in their hands. No stone shall be left unturned--no money shall be spared. If I lose Mollie, life is not worth the having."

He rose to go. Mr. Walraven folded up the mysterious epistle and handed it back.

"I see it is postmarked in the city. If the writer really knows aught of Mollie, she must be nearer at hand than we imagine. Would to Heaven the week were up."

"Then you have faith in this?" said the baronet, looking astonished.

"I have hope, my dear sir. It is very easy believing in what we wish to come true. There may be something in it. Who knows?"

The baronet shook his head.

"I wish I could think so. I sometimes fear we will never see her again. Poor child! Poor little Mollie! Heaven only knows what you may not have suffered ere this!"

"Let us not despair. Pray, resume your seat. I am quite alone this stormy night, Sir Roger. Mrs. Walraven has gone to the opera."

But the baronet moved resolutely to the door.

"Thanks, Mr. Walraven; but I am fit company for no one. I have been utterly miserable since that fatal night. I can find rest nowhere. I will not inflict my wearisome society upon you, my friend. Good-night!"

The week passed. As Sir Roger said, the inquiries and rewards were doubled--trebled; but all in vain. No trace--not the faintest shadow of trace--of the lost one could be found. The mystery deepened and darkened every day.

The week expired. On its last night there met at the Walraven mansion a few friends, to debate what steps had better next be taken.

"In the council of many there is wisdom," thought Mr. Carl Walraven; so that there were present, besides Sir Roger Trajenna, Dr. Oleander, Mr. Sardonyx, Hugh Ingelow, and one or two more wiseacres, all anxious about the missing bride.

The bevy of gentlemen were assembled in the drawing-room, conversing with solemn, serious faces, and many dubious shakes of the head.

Sir Roger sat the picture of pale despair. Mr. Walraven looked harassed half to death. The other gentlemen, were preternaturally grave.

"It is of no use." Sir Roger was saying. "Those who abducted her have laid their plans too well. She will never be found."

"Are you sure she was abducted?" asked Dr. Oleander, doubtfully. "Is it not just possible, my dear Sir Roger, she may have gone off of herself?"

Everybody stared at this audacious suggestion.

"There is no such possibility, Doctor Oleander," said Sir Roger, haughtily. "The bare insinuation is an insult. Miss Dane was my plighted wife of her own free will."

"Your pardon, Sir Roger. Yet, please remember, Miss Dane was a highly eccentric young lady, and the rules that hold good in other cases fail here. She was accustomed to do most extraordinary things, for the mere sake of being odd and uncommon, as I take it. Her guardian will bear me out; therefore I still cling to the possibility."

"Besides, young ladies possessing sound lungs will hardly permit themselves to be carried off without raising an outcry," said Mr. Sardonyx; "and in this case there was none. The faintest cry would have been heard."

"Neither were there any traces of a struggle," put in Mr. Ingelow, "and the chamber window was found unfastened, as if the bride had loosed it herself and stepped out."

Sir Roger looked angrily around, with a glance that seemed to ask if they were all in a conspiracy against him; but, before he could speak, the door-bell rang loudly.

Mr. Walraven remembered the anonymous note, and started violently. An instant later, they heard a servant open the door, and then a wild, ringing shriek echoed through the house.

There was one simultaneous rush out of the drawing-room, and down-stairs. There, in the hall, stood Wilson, the footman, staring and gasping as if he had seen a ghost; and there, in the door-way, a silvery, shining vision, in the snowy bridal robes she had worn last, stood Mollie Dane!


CHAPTER X.

THE PARSON'S LITTLE STORY.

There was a dead pause; blank amazement sat on every face; no one stirred for an instant. Then, with a great cry of joy, the Welsh baronet sprung forward and caught his lost bride in his arms.

"My Mollie--my Mollie! My darling!"

But his darling, instead of returning his rapturous embrace, disengaged herself with a sudden jerk.

"Pray, Sir Roger, don't make a scene! Guardy, how d'ye do? Is it after dinner? I'm dreadfully tired and hungry!"

"Mollie! Good heavens, Mollie! is this really you?" gasped Mr. Walraven, staring aghast.

"Now--now!" cried Miss Dane, testily; "what's the good of your asking ridiculous questions, Guardy Walraven? Where's your eyesight? Don't you see it's me? Will you kindly let me pass, gentlemen? or am I to stand here all night on exhibition?"

Evidently the stray lamb had returned to the fold in shocking bad temper. The gentlemen barring her passage instantly made way, and Mollie turned to ascend the staircase.

"I'm going to my room, Guardy," she condescended to say, with her foot on the first carpeted step, "and you will please send Lucy up with tea and toast immediately. I'm a great deal too tired to offer any explanation to-night. I feel as if I had been riding about in a hackney-carriage for a century or two, like Peter Rugg, the missing man--if you heard of Peter;" with which Miss Dane toiled slowly and wearily up the grand staircase, and the group of gentlemen were left in the hall below blankly gazing in one another's faces.

"Eminently characteristic," observed Mr. Ingelow, the first to break the silence, with a soft laugh.

"Upon my word," said Dr. Oleander, with his death's-head smile, "Miss Mollie's return is far more remarkable than her departure! That young lady's _sang-froid_ requires to be seen to be believed in."

"Where can she have been?" asked Lawyer Sardonyx, helplessly taking snuff.

The two men most interested in the young lady's return said nothing: they were far beyond that. They could only look at each other in mute astonishment. At last--

"The anonymous letter did speak the truth," observed Mr. Walraven.

"What anonymous letter?" asked Lawyer Sardonyx, sharply.

"Sir Roger received an anonymous letter a week ago, informing him Mollie would be back a week after its date. We neither of us paid any attention to it, and yet, lo! it has come true."

"Have you that letter about you, Sir Roger?" inquired the lawyer. "I should like to see it, if you have no objection."

Mechanically Sir Roger put his hand in his pocket, and produced the document. The lawyer glanced keenly over it.

"'One Who Knows.' Ah! 'One Who Knows' is a woman, I am certain. That's a woman's hand, I am positive. Look here, Oleander!"

"My opinion exactly! Couldn't possibly be Miss Dane's own writing, could it?" once more with his spectral smile.

"Sir!" cried the baronet, reddening angrily.

"I beg your pardon. But look at the case dispassionately, Sir Roger. My previous impression that Miss Dane was not forcibly abducted is continued by the strange manner of her return."

"Mine also," chimed in Lawyer Sardonyx.

"Suppose we all postpone forming an opinion on the subject," said the lazy voice of the young artist, "until to-morrow, and allow Miss Dane, when the has recovered from her present fatigue and hunger, to explain for herself."

"Thanks, Ingelow"--Mr. Walraven turned a grateful glance upon the lounging artist--"and, meantime, gentlemen, let us adjourn to the drawing-room. Standing talking here I don't admire."

He led the way; the others followed--Sir Roger last of all, lost in a maze of bewilderment that utterly spoiled his joy at his bride's return.

"What can it mean? What can it mean?" he kept perpetually asking himself. "What is all this mystery? Surely--surely it can not be as these men say! Mollie can not have gone off of herself!"

It was rather dull the remainder of the evening. The guests took their departure early. Sir Roger lingered behind the rest, and when alone with him the master of the house summoned Lucy. That handmaiden appeared, her eyes dancing with delight in her head.

"Where is your mistress, Lucy?" Mr. Walraven asked.

"Gone to bed, sir," said Lucy, promptly.

"You brought her up supper?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did she say to you?"

"Nothing much, sir, only that she was famished, and jolted to death in that old carriage; and then she turned me out, saying she felt as though she could sleep a week."

"Nothing more?"

"Nothing more, sir."

Lucy was dismissed.

Mr. Walraven turned to the baronet sympathizingly.

"I feel as deeply mystified and distressed about this matter as even you can do, my dear Sir Roger; but you perceive there is nothing for it but to wait. Oleander was right this evening when he said the rules that measure other women fail with Mollie. She is an original, and we must be content to bide her time. Come early to-morrow--come to breakfast--and doubtless all will be explained to our satisfaction."

And so Mr. Walraven thought, and he fancied he understood Mollie pretty well; but even Mr. Walraven did not know the depth of aggravation his flighty ward was capable of.

Sir Roger did come early on the morrow--ridiculously early, Mrs. Carl said, sharply; but then Mrs. Carl was exasperated beyond everything at Mollie presuming to return at all. She was sure she had got rid of her so nicely--so sure Mistress Mollie had come to grief in some way for her sins--that it was a little too bad to have her come walking coolly back and taking possession again, as if nothing had happened.

Breakfast hour arrived, but Miss Dane did not arrive with it. They waited ten minutes, when Mrs. Carl lost patience and protested angrily she would not wait an instant longer.

"Eccentricity is a little too mild a word to apply to your ward's actions, Mr. Walraven," she said, turning angrily upon her husband. "Mollie Dane is either a very mad girl or a very wicked one. In either case, she is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, and the sooner she is incased in a strait-jacket and her antics ended, the better."

"Madame!" thundered Mr. Walraven, furiously, while the baronet reddened with rage to the roots of his silvery hair.

"Oh, I'm not afraid of you,