Nothing more was said. No one had any thing to say. This double arrest was something too terrible for words, and the darkest forebodings came to the mind of each one of these unhappy victims of the law. And thus, in silence and in fear, they were led away—to prison and to judgment.
CHAPTER LIII. — THE BROTHERS.
On leaving Dalton Hall Reginald went to the place mentioned by Miss Fortescue. It was on the railway, and was about four miles from Dudleigh Manor. Here he found Miss Fortescue.
She told him that she had tried to find Leon by making inquiries every where among his old haunts, but without any success whatever. At last she concluded that, since he was in such strict hiding, Dudleigh Manor itself would not be an unlikely place in which to find him. She had come here, and, after disguising herself with her usual skill, had made inquiries of the porter with as much adroitness as possible. All her efforts, however, were quite in vain. The porter could not be caught committing himself in any way, but professed to have seen nothing of the missing man for months. She would have come away from this experiment in despair had it not been for one circumstance, which, though small in itself, seemed to her to have very deep meaning. It was this. While she was talking with the porter a dog came up, which at once began to fawn on her. This amazed the porter, who did not like the appearance of things, and tried to drive the dog away. But Miss Fortescue had in an instant recognized the dog of Leon, well known to herself, and once a great pet.
This casual appearance of the dog seemed to her the strongest possible proof that Leon was now in that very place. He must have been left purposely in Dalton Park for a few days, probably having been stationed at that very spot which he kept so persistently. If so, the same one who left him there must have brought him here. It was inconceivable that the dog could have found his way here alone from Dalton Park. In addition to this, the porter's uneasiness at the dog's recognition of her was of itself full of meaning.
This was all that she had been able to find out, but this was enough. Fearful that Leon might suspect who she was, she had written to Reginald at once; and now that he had come, she urged him to go to Dudleigh Manor himself and find out the truth.
There was no need to urge Reginald. His anxiety about his mother was enough to make him anxious to lose no time, but the prospect of finding Leon made him now doubly anxious. It was already evening however, and he would have to defer his visit until the following day.
At about nine o'clock the next morning Reginald Dudleigh stood at his father's gate—the gate of that home from which he had been so long an exile. The porter came out to open it, and stared at him in surprise.