"How long has your husband been missing?" he abruptly inquired.
"Since last night," in a very low tone.
"When did you see him last? Tell me that!"
"I have already told you--last evening."
"Tell me all that has occurred from the time you both left Rockhold to the time you entered this house which I placed at your disposal and to which I sent you, to save you from the noise and bustle and excitement of a crowded hotel, and to give you rest and quiet and seclusion. Yes!
and this the result! But go on and tell me. From the time you left Rockhold to this time, mind you!"
"Very well, sir, I will tell you. Our journey, a series of ovations. Our reception in this city was a triumph. We were met at the depot by a great crowd, and by the committee with carriages, and we were escorted to this house by a military and civil procession with a band of music.
They left us at the gate.
"We entered, and were received by the servants. As soon as I had changed my dress we went down to dinner. After dinner we went into the drawing room. A gentleman was announced on official business connected with the ceremonies of to-day. He was shown into the library, and my husband went to him. Many callers came. They talked with Mr. Rothsay in the library.
I remained in this room. At last the crowd began to thin off, and soon all were gone. Mr. Rothsay came into this room--and sat down by my side. We talked together for an hour or more. Then a card was brought in. Mr. Rothsay took it, looked at it, and said:
""I will see the gentleman. Show him into the front room."
"Mr. Rothsay arose and went into the front room to receive his visitor.
It was late, and I was very tired, so I went up stairs to my chamber and retired to bed. I have never seen my husband since."
And Corona dropped her face upon her hands and sobbed as if her heart would break. She had utterly broken down for the first time.
"Good heavens! I don"t understand it all! Had you had a lover"s quarrel now in that hour when you talked together in this parlor?" inquired the old gentleman, his insane anger being now merged in wonder. "Had you reproached him for spending so much time with his political friends while you were waiting here alone?"
"Oh, no, no," replied Corona, between her convulsive sobs.
"Good heavens!" again exclaimed the old man. "When did you first miss him?"
"When I came down in the morning. I thought then that he had been kept up all night by his friends, and that I should meet him at breakfast. He did not appear at breakfast. The servants searched for him all over the house, but could not find him. I waited breakfast until I was faint with fasting and suspense. Then I took a cup of coffee. On inquiry it was found that Jasper had been the last to see him, and that he had not seen him since he showed the visitor in. He did not show the visitor out. He waited some time to do so, and fell asleep. When he awoke the visitor had gone, and the drawing rooms were empty. The man supposed that Mr.
Rothsay had seen his friend to the door, and had then retired to bed.
And so he shut up the house and went to his room. No one discovered that Mr. Rothsay was missing until this morning. When the inaugural committee came two hours ago, the servants told them all that I have just told you."
"Who was the last visitor? He might throw some light upon this dark, evil subject. Who was he?" abruptly demanded Aaron Rockharrt.
"I do not know. No one seems to know. Jasper says he never saw him before, nor ever heard his name."
"Couldn"t he see it on his card?"
"Jasper cannot read, you must remember."
"Where is that card? Let me see it!"
"It cannot be found."
"Conspiracy! Treason! Murder!" interrupted Aaron Rockharrt. "The governor-elect has been decoyed away from the house by that last caller, and has been murdered! And the people in the house may not be as innocent or ignorant as they pretend to be. I will go out and take counsel with the committee," he said, and he turned and strode out of the drawing room.
When he reached the hall, however, he found that the officials had gone to pursue their search for the missing man elsewhere. The men of his own party were nowhere to be seen. The porter, Jasper, was the only occupant of the hall, and Aaron Rockharrt opened the hall door and walked out.
The military and civil escort were still on parade before the house, waiting for the governor-elect.
Mr. Rockharrt"s carriage was standing before the door. He entered it and ordered the coachman to drive to police headquarters.
The hour for the inauguration of the new governor was approaching. The procession to the State house should have been in motion by this time.
The people on the sidewalks, at the doors and windows, on the balconies, and on the roofs, all along the line of march, were beginning to be weary of waiting.
The officials who had the ceremonies of the occasion in hand waited until three o"clock in the afternoon, and then, as the governor-elect was nowhere to be found, as the necessity was imminent, the inaugural procession was ordered to begin its march.
"Where is he? Where is Rothsay?" demanded the spectators one of the other.
No one knew. No one had seen him. No one could, therefore, answer.
When the procession reached the State house, the lieutenant-governor, Kennelm Kennedy, was sworn in, and the military companies and the civic societies and the spectators all dispersed.
But where was the governor? That was the question of the hour. Why had he not been inaugurated? was asked by everybody of everybody else. The secret of his total and unexplained disappearance had not, indeed, been closely kept. His intimate friends, his household servants and the public officials knew it, but the general public did not.
The next morning the news came out, and the papers had sensational head-lines and long accounts of the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the governor-elect on the eve of his inauguration and of a bridegroom on the evening of his wedding day.
Also there were rewards offered for any intelligence of Regulas Rothsay, living or dead, and for the identification of the unknown visitor who was supposed to have been the last to have seen him on the night of his disappearance.
Days pa.s.sed, and nothing came in answer to the advertis.e.m.e.nts. The public at length reached in theory this conclusion: that the governor-elect had been decoyed from the house by his latest visitor, and had been secretly murdered in some remote quarter.
The Rockharrts did not return to Rockhold, but remained in town through all the heat of that hot summer, because Aaron Rockharrt thought he could best pursue his investigations on the scene of the mystery. But he sent his sons to North End to look after the works.
Corona would see no one save the members of her own family. She kept her room, and grieved without ceasing. On the ninth day after the disappearance of her lover-husband she made an effort and came down into the drawing room, to please the gentle old grandmother.
She sat there with the old lady, reading to her, until Mrs. Rockharrt was called out by her tyrant to get something, it might be a book or a paper, a cigar or a pipe, that he himself or a servant might have got just as well, except that Aaron Rockharrt liked to have the ladies of his family wait upon him.
What happened during the hour of the old lady"s absence from the drawing room no one knew, but when she returned she found her granddaughter in a swoon on the carpet. In great alarm she called the servants to her a.s.sistance. The unconscious girl was laid upon a sofa, and all means were taken to restore her to her senses. Corona recovered her faculties only to fall into the most violent paroxysms of anguish and despair.
From her ravings and self-reproaches Mrs. Rockharrt gathered that the unfortunate girl had heard, or in some way learned, some fatal news.
She sent all the servants out of the room, locked the door, administered a sedative to her child, and then, when the latter was somewhat calmer, questioned her as to the cause of her distress.
"I have nothing to tell--nothing, nothing to tell! But take me away from this place! Take me home to Rockhold, where I may be alone!"
"I will do all I can to comfort you, my dear," said Mrs. Rockharrt. "I will speak to Mr. Rockharrt when he comes in."
No one but the snubbed, brow-beaten and humiliated wife knew all that she engaged to suffer when she promised to speak to her lord and master.
Corona, soothed by the sedative that had been given her, and consoled by the love and sympathy that had been lavished upon her, grew more composed, and finally fell into a deep sleep from which she awoke refreshed. But a rumor went through the house that the young lady had got news which she did not choose to communicate.
Later in the day Mrs. Rockharrt deferentially proposed to the domestic despot that they should return to Rockhold, as the weather was so oppressive and the town house was so obnoxious to dear Corona, which was quite natural under the trying circ.u.mstances.
Aaron Rockharrt glared at her until she cowered, and then he told her that he should direct the movements of his family as he thought proper, and that any suggestions from her or from his granddaughter were both unnecessary and impertinent.
So they both had to bend under the iron will of Aaron Rockharrt.
At length, however, something happened to relieve them.