"Locked everything up, Bowers?" inquired that martial woman.
"All but the front door," he replied. "Lot of use it was me having to go down those cellar stairs for a scuttle-full of coal! They've gone out."
"Gone out?" Mrs. Bowers echoed. "At this time of night?"
"Must have. Neither of them was in the library when I went in with the scuttle, nor when I took the tray in."
"Well, that's not like Miss Margaret to want a fire one moment and then go trapesing out in the garden the next," remarked Mrs. Bowers. "They're probably in the study."
"What would they go and sit there for, when they've lit a fire in the library?" Bowers demanded.
"Don't ask me!" his wife abjured him. "But if that's what they are doing all I can say is Miss Margaret'll catch her death, and start one of her coughs, for it's the coldest room in the house. I think I'll go along and see what she is up to." She got out of her chair, not without effort, for she was a lady of ample proportions, and sailed away to scold Margaret for her imprudence.
But the study was in darkness, and Mrs. Bowers' opening gambit of "Now, Miss Margaret, you know you didn't ought to sit in this cold room," was cut off short. Mrs. Bowers went across to the library; that was empty too, and so were both the drawing and dining-rooms.
Bowers had followed his wife into the front part of the house by this time, and he again repeated his own conviction that they had strolled out.
"What, after Mr. Peter saying Miss Margaret was feeling shivery, and would like a fire? Stuff and nonsense!"
"Well, if they haven't gone out, where are they?" Bowers asked reasonably. "Perhaps Mr. Peter thought a walk would warm his sister up."
"If he thought anything so silly he'll have a few straight words with me when he comes in, grown up or not!" declared Mrs. Bowers with a look in her eye that all the Fortescues had been familiar with since babyhood. "Bowers, my man, just you pop up and knock on their bedroom doors to make sure they're not there."
"Well, they aren't, because they haven't taken their candles," said Bowers, pointing to the array on the hall table.
"Never you mind whether they've taken candles or not, you go up and see," commanded his wife.
Sighing, Bowers obeyed, but he soon reappeared with the intelligence that it was just as he had said: no one was upstairs. "I tell you what," he said. "They've gone to meet the others, and they wanted the fire lit for when they come in."
"It does look like it," Mrs. Bowers admitted. "And if that's what they have done, I'm not going up myself till they're in. I know Miss Margaret, none better! Never was there a child like her for catching colds, and the first thing she'll do when she gets in is to pop right into bed with a hot bottle, or my name's not Emma Bowers." With that she proceeded majestically back to the kitchen, and resumed her seat by the fire. She picked up her crochet again, but her eyes kept lifting to the clock on the mantelpiece, and when the hands pointed to eleven, she could no longer contain herself. "I'll give Mr. Peter a piece of my mind when he comes in!" she said wrathfully. "When did you take that scuttle to the library, Bowers?"
"I dunno. Bit after ten, I think," Bowers answered, deep in the racing columns of a newspaper.
"Then they've been out a full hour! I never did in all my life! Hark, was that the front door? For the love of goodness, stop reading that nasty trash!"
Bowers put the paper down meekly, and listened. Voices sounded in the hall. "That's the master I can hear," he said.
Mrs. Bowers once more arose and sallied forth. In the hall Mrs. Bosanquet was unwinding the inevitable tulle from her head. As Mrs. Bowers came into the hall Charles said: "Ten o'clock would have been a godly hour at which to have taken our leave. I shall never forgive you, Aunt Lilian. Never."
"I'm sorry if you were anxious to go, my dear," was the placid reply, "but I was in the middle of a very interesting discussion with the Vicar. I found him most enlightened: not in the least hide-bound, as I had feared might be the case."
Celia saw Mrs. Bowers. "Hullo, still up, Emma?" she said.
"Miss Celia, where's Miss Margaret and Mr. Peter? Didn't you meet them?"
"Meet them? No, did they set out to look for us?"
"That's what we don't know, madam. Bowers thought so, but I said all along they wouldn't do a thing like that on a night as cold as this is. All I do know is, they aren't in the house."
"What's that?" Charles stopped arguing with Mrs. Bosanquet, and stepped to his wife's side. "When did they go out?"
"It must have been about ten o'clock, sir, from what Bowers tells me."
"But how funny!" said Celia. "What in the world cann have possessed them? Do you suppose they got bored, and went to look up the Colonel?"
"Well, Miss Celia, they may have done so, but all I can say is it's not like Miss Margaret to go ordering a fire to be lit if she means to go out the moment it's done."
"A fire? Did she order a fire?" Charles asked.
"Yes, sir, she did. Mr. Peter came out to the kitchen with the library scuttle, which was empty." She looked over her shoulder at Bowers. "Round about ten o'clock that would have been, wouldn't it, Bowers?"
Just about then, or maybe a minute or two after," Bowers agreed.
"But you say they went out at ten," frowned Charles. "So they must have, sir," Bowers replied. "Because it didn't take me more than five minutes to fill the scuttle, and when I took it back to the library, which I did straight away, there wasn't a sign of either of them. I didn't set much store by it, but when I came back with the tray ten minutes after that, and they still weren't there, I did think it was a bit funny, and I mentioned it to Mrs. Bowers, just in a casual way."
"Perhaps Margaret has induced her brother to walk up to the ruin by moonlight," suggested Mrs. Bosanquet, who had caught perhaps half of what had been said. "It is a very clear night, but I must say I think it was imprudent of the dear child to go out with the wind in the north as it is."
"My dear Aunt Lilian, they wouldn't spend an hour at the chapel!" Charles said.
"An hour! No, certainly not. But have they been gone for so long as that?"
Celia was looking at her husband. "Charles, you're worried?"
"I am bit," he confessed. "I can't see why they should want to go out like that. No one came to the house during the evening, I suppose?"
"No, sir, no one to my knowledge. That is, no one rang the front-door bell, nor yet the back either."
"They must have gone to the Colonel's!" Celia said.
"Then what did they want a fire for, Miss Celia?" struck in Mrs. Bowers.
"Perhaps they thought it was such a sudden change in the weather that we might be cold after our drive," Celia suggested.
"No, madam, they never thought that, for as I was just saying to Bowers, Mr. Peter brought that scuttle out, and said Miss Margaret was feeling shivery, and was going to light the fire. Which she must have done - unless you did, Bowers?"
"No, I never lit it," Bowers answered. "It was burning up fine when I brought the scuttle in."
Charles strode over to the library, and went in. "Windows been shut all the evening?" he asked.
"No, sir. When I came in I found them just held together. I'll show you, sir." He drew back the bolts, and placed the windows as Peter had left them. "Like that, sir."