“Hark!” exclaimed Cecilia suddenly, “there is a horse running away!” and her words seemed confirmed by so rapid a clatter of hoofs, that not only Ida, but Aumerle and the countess followed her quickly to the open door to see if some rider were not in peril. The alarm was in one sense a false one; the horse that came gallopping on was impelled to furious speed by the whip and the spur of its rider, as if— “Headlong haste or deadly fear Urged the precipitate career;” and the party saw with surprise that this rider was Dr. Bardon. He reined up so suddenly at the garden-gate that the panting steed was thrown violently back on its haunches. The doctor flung himself quickly from the saddle, and without even pausing to throw the rein round a post, advanced to the party at the door. His long white hair streamed wildly back from his excited face. “Something has happened!” exclaimed Ida; Annabella’s tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth! “The balloon!” cried Cecilia; “tell us, oh! tell us, has some accident befallen the balloon?” The gesture of Bardon was one which might well have beseemed a prophet of desolation, as raising his arm he exclaimed, “Lost! lost! past recovery!” “How lost?—what would you have us believe?—remember in whose presence you speak!” cried Lawrence Aumerle almost sternly. “I cannot mince my tale,” was the gloomy reply, “nor deal out poison by drops. By some fatal mistake the balloon was let off before the car had been entered by the only man who could guide it. We are never likely to hear anything more of it, or the unfortunate beings within it!” “Who were in it?” exclaimed the Aumerles in one breath. “Who were in it?” echoed the countess in a sepulchral voice, fixing upon Bardon an eye which sought to read in his face a sentence of life or death. “Augustine Aumerle was there—and Mabel—” The father uttered an exclamation of anguish, and Ida staggered backwards, closing her eyes, as if a poniard had stuck her. “And—and—the Earl of Dashleigh!” Annabella gave such a piercing cry as agony might wring from a wretch upon the rack, and would have sunk on the earth but for the support of her uncle. “There may be hope yet,—God is merciful,—He will have compassion on us,—let us pray, let us pray!” exclaimed the vicar, in the sight of the misery of another seeming half to forget his own. “See—see!” exclaimed Cecilia, suddenly pointing towards the sky.