"Oh, may God forgive you, woman, for lending yourself to this wicked conspiracy against a wronged girl! Surely He who reigns above will send me safe deliverance from my prison-house." "Poor, pretty creature, raving mad, that she is," comments stupid, yet kind-hearted Betsy Robson. CHAPTER XLI. The utmost dismay and horror settled down upon the household at Fairvale Park when it was found that every trace of Lady Vera's whereabouts was swallowed up in impenetrable darkness and mystery. Sir Harry and Lady Clive believed that Mrs. Cleveland was the guilty party who had decoyed her from her home, and they foreboded that the too-confiding girl had been murdered in cold blood by her ruthless foe. Little Hal's story of the woman who had given him the note for Lady Vera in the wood confirmed them in their first suspicions, and they bitterly bewailed Lady Vera's mistaken clemency in letting her would-be murderess go free that night in London. But when Colonel Lockhart came down from London that evening in response to their telegram, though he was almost distracted by this new and crushing blow to his happiness, the quick instinct of love turned his suspicions unerringly to the truth. "It is not Mrs. Cleveland who has abducted Lady Vera. I cannot believe it for an instant. She would not have ventured on such a course," he says, decidedly; "Leslie Noble is the guilty party." "Then what are we to do, Philip?" Lady Clive asks, piteously. "We must oppose cunning to cunning," he answers, thoughtfully. "I shall return to London to-night and employ a skillful detective to shadow Leslie Noble's every footstep. You may be sure that the wretch has shut Lady Vera up in some obscure place in the hope of coercing her to yield to his wishes. Oh, Heaven, what anguish may not my darling be suffering now while I am powerless to rescue her!" He walks distractedly up and down the floor, while tears of not unmanly grief gather in his troubled blue eyes. "But, Philip, you forget that it was a woman who gave little Hal the note for Lady Vera," exclaims Sir Harry, unwilling to give up his theory of Mrs. Cleveland's handiwork in the abduction. "Leslie Noble may have employed a woman as his tool in the affair, or he may have masqueraded in female attire himself, but I am sure that he is the guilty party," Colonel Lockhart answers, unshaken in his conviction, "But to satisfy your doubts, Sir Harry, we will have a watch set upon Mrs. Cleveland also. Nothing shall be left undone that can possibly tend to the rescue of Lady Vera from the power of her enemies." He goes back to London that night. Sir Harry Clive and his family follow him the next day. Two of the most skillful detectives in London are quietly set on the track of the supposed guilty parties. All London rings with the story of the daring abduction of the beautiful Countess of Fairvale.