For a whole week the press had no other topic; the police telegraphed to all the capitals; a reward of a thousand pounds was offered for knowledge of Lord Maclaren, "last seen upon the East Cliff at Ramsgate at three o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday, the fifth of July." A hundred tongues gave you the exact details of an imagined assassination; ten times that number--and these tongues chiefly feminine--told you that he had shirked the marriage upon its very threshold. But the mystery remained unexplained--and as the day for the wedding drew near, the excitement amongst a section of society rose to fever heat. Had the body been found? Had the detectives a clue? Were the strange hints--implying that the missing man had quarrelled with his _fiancée's_ brother, and thrown a glass of wine in his face; that he had a wife in Algiers; that he was married a year ago at Cyprus; that he was bankrupt--merely the fable of malicious tongues, or had they that germ of truth from which so vast a disease of scandal can grow? I made no pretence to answer the questions--but they interested me, and I watched for the development of the story with the keenness of a hardened novel reader.
The day fixed for the wedding now drew near; and when the bridegroom did not appear, the vulgar, who do not believe scandals though they like to hear them, declared that the murder theory was true beyond question. The rest said that he was either bankrupt or bigamist--and having consoled themselves with the reflection, they let the matter go. It is likely that I should have done the same had I not enjoyed a solution of the mystery, which came to me unsought and accidentally. On a day near to that fixed for the wedding I was at Victoria Station about eight o'clock in the evening when I ran full upon the missing nobleman; and for some while stood speechless with astonishment at the sight of him. His beard was longer than ever, recalling the traditions of Killingworthe or of Johann Mayo; his Dundreary whiskers were shaggy and unkempt; he was very pale in the face, and wore a little yachting cap and a blue serge suit which begarbed him ridiculously. He had no luggage with him, not even a valise; and his first remark was given in the voice of a man afraid, and in a measure broken.