She was thought by some to have simply run away after the manner of undisciplined youth aiming at mock heroism; but where, or with whom? for, said the keen-eyed women and large-mouthed men, incredulous of maiden meditation fancy free, a pretty young thing of nineteen would never have left her comfortable home, her father, friends and good name, without some lover stirring in the matter.  And this lover was just the missing link not to be found anywhere.  Others said she had drowned herself; but here, again, Why?  Young girls do not give up their precious freight of hope in love and present joy in youth for a trifling ailment or a temporary annoyance.  And nothing worse than either could have befallen Leam, said the reasoners, putting their little twos and twos together and totting up the items with the serene accuracy of spiritual arithmeticians, dealing with human emotion as if it was a sum in long division which any schoolboy could calculate.

Edgar Harrowby, however, who came forward manfully enough to say when and where—­if not how—­he had last seen Miss Dundas, leant to the side of the believers in suicide, and on his own responsibility ordered the Broad to be dragged.  Which looked ugly, said a few of the rasher spirits in the village, cherishing suspicion of their betters as the birthright which had never had a chance of being bartered for a mess of pottage; while the more contemptuous, critical after the event, gave it as their opinion that the major had a bee in his bonnet somewhere, for what gentleman in his seven sane senses would have looked for such a mare’s nest as Miss Leam Dundas lying among the bulrushes of the Broad?  Drowned herself?  No:  it was no drowning of herself that had come to little miss, be sure of that.

What, however, had come to her no one knew.  The fact only was certain:  she had gone, and no one had met her coming or seen her going, and for all trace left she might as well have melted into air like one of the fairy women of romance.  To be sure, the servants had heard her in her room in the early evening, and she had refused the tea which they had brought her, and told them, through the closed door, that she wanted nothing more that night.  So they left her to herself, supposing her to be in one of her queer moods, to which they were used to give but scant heed, and not thinking more about her.  The next morning she was missing, but when she had gone was as dark as where.

The discovery, later in the day, that certain effects, such as her mother’s dressing-case and a few personal necessities of daily use, were gone too, seemed to dispose effectually of the theory of suicide; though what remained, a lover, companion of her flight, being wanting?  It was a strange thing altogether, and the country was alive with wild theories and wild reports.  But in a few days a letter from Mr. Dundas to the rector, and another to Edgar, set the question of self-destruction at rest, though also they gave loose to other energies of conjecture, for in both he said, “No harm has come to her, and I am content to let her remain where she has elected to place herself.”