Both Sir John and Rachel tottered to Marjory's door, and demanding it to be broken open, Sir John entered to be further astonished at her absence, to be sure. On her bed she cannot have lain the previous night, which was proof positive that she was an announced accomplice. But the mystery had yet to be solved as to the action of their flight. Guilt took strong hold on Rachel. She knew the key was always kept in a drawer in her own room, which drawer was constantly kept locked by her and the key hidden inside the little clock that ticked so gently on the mantel-piece in her room; but on second thought, she was so busily engaged during the Christmas season that actually she forgot to lock the drawer the whole week. Never dreaming that this overlook on her part was so cleverly taken notice of by her who not alone committed the ruffianous act, but caused all the blame to be thrown on the party in charge. The housekeeper, who felt sadly and very much annoyed about the affair, grasped the whole thing--first, she thought of Marjory's professed illness the evening previous, then how she tried her door before going to bed, and in this attempt to enter was unsuccessful, and that very morning there was no answer, and, finally, she was missing as well as Lady Dunfern. The well-arranged plot pictured itself in a most vivid manner to her who in one respect, regarding the key's safety, was entirely to blame. Sir John, summoning all his men, ordered them to go at once and intimate to the officers of the law the sudden flight of the miscreants, and to try and find out their whereabouts; but no trace of them was as yet nigh at hand. The deceived husband appeared greatly crushed under such a weight of sorrow, and wondering whether or not they could be found, or if Oscar Otwell, he who so often wrote to his wife during her period of imprisonment, had ought to do with her daring adventure, aided by Marjory Mason! It is no longer an unsolved problem that Oscar Otwell was from first to last the chief irritating item of Sir John Dunfern's unhappiness, and whose supposed underhand communications with Lady Dunfern were the principal features depicted in this escape. These letters of Otwell's Sir John still retained, never reaching her for whom they were intended. Opening his large Davenport that stood close by, he extracted therefrom all the letters of the vaguish tutor, and coming to the one received lastly, found it bore the address, "Chitworth College, Hedley, Berks." This was so much information regarding the rascal who was the sole means of separating Sir John Dunfern and his wife. The husband, paralysed with sorrow, instantly wrote to Doctor O'Sullivan, the President of the College, who in youthful years was his most intimate acquaintance, and whose name appeared so often in Oscar's letters, making the necessary inquiries relative to one of the teaching staff named "Oscar Otwell."