“Where is she?—­she has gone!” he almost screamed as he saw the look of consternation on her face.

“I cannot find her,” Margaret replied, addressing herself to Sir Thomas.  “I have searched her rooms, but all in vain; and no one knows aught of her, no one has seen her.”

“Said I not so?” furiously exclaimed Sir Edward.  “She has gone; the bird has flown.”

“What bird?” asked the baron, coming up.

“Dorothy, Sir George.  Dorothy has fled.”

“Fled; nay it cannot be,” returned the baron, stoutly.  He had too much faith in Dorothy to believe that.

“They are searching for her now,” said Margaret.  “Nobody knows where she is, and Sir Edward has missed her long.  I cannot understand it.”

“Her clothes are gone.  Her riding habit has gone,” exclaimed one of the domestics, rushing breathlessly up to the group.  “Father Nicholas hath just come in and he says two horses, galloping, passed him on the Ashbourne road.  One, he thinks might have been a lady, but it was too dark to see distinctly.”

This she gasped out in jerks, but her news was intelligible enough, and it threw the whole assembly at once into a ferment of confusion, amid which could be heard the voice of Sir Edward Stanley exclaiming, in a tone far above the rest of the babel—­“That was Dorothy.”

“Gone!” exclaimed the baron, aghast.  “Nay, search the Hall.”

“Out; to your saddles, ye gallant knights,” commanded Sir Thomas Stanley, promptly.  “Here is a prize worth the capturing.  She must be stopped!” and he quickly led the way to the stables, and in a very short space of time was mounted and urging his steed to the utmost along the Ashbourne road.

Sir George stayed behind; he could not believe that Dorothy had really gone; but when a thorough investigation of the Hall, and the outbuildings also, revealed the fact that she was nowhere there, he was stricken with dismay, and succumbed, for a time, to a feeling of despair.

“Nicholas,” he said, as the worthy father approached to comfort him, “thou art sure that one was a lady?”

“It was dark, Sir George,” the priest replied.  “I was unsuspicious, and deep in meditation, but I fear it was so.”

“Was it my Doll?”

“I cannot say,” he replied.  “I never saw the face, and did but imperfectly see the form.”

The baron sank back, regardless of the ladies who crowded round him, commiserating his ill fortune.  He remained silent, with a bowed head and bleeding heart.

All night long the pursuit was kept up.  Every lane was searched, every innkeeper was severely catechised, and although in several instances they had the satisfaction of hearing that couples, either on horses or in conveyances, had passed, yet when the quarry was hunted down, if it did not turn out to be an inoffensive market gardener and his worthy spouse returning from Derby Christmas market, in almost every other instance the horsemen were the decoys that Manners had so carefully provided.