"Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid!" she moaned piteously, wringing her hands in an agony of apprehension.
"What is it you fear? What calamity can have happened which would involve both your son and mine? Surely nothing dreadful could happen to both our sons, and yet no tidings come either to you or to me. Wherever they were—if any accident happened—one or other of them would be recognized. Some one would bring us the news. No; I have been anxious and unhappy; but I am sure now that I have been needlessly anxious. We shall hear from them—very soon."
Mrs. Wornock clasped Lady Emily's hand in silence, and shook her head despondently.
"What is it you fear?" asked Allan's mother.
"I don't know—but I am full of fear for Geoffrey—for both of them."
Lady Emily left her, depressed and dispirited by the fear which shrunk from shaping itself in words. The disposition to take a hopeful view of the case did not last in the face of Mrs. Wornock's mysterious agitations, and Allan's mother went back to Beechhurst stupefied with anxiety, able only to walk about the house, in and out of the empty rooms, in helpless misery.
That state of not knowing what to fear ended suddenly soon after nine o'clock, when there came the sound of wheels, and a carriage stopped at the hall door. Lady Emily rushed to the door and opened it with her own hands, before any one had time to ring the bell; opened it to find herself face to face with the woman she had left only two hours before.
Mrs. Wornock was stepping out of her carriage as the hall door opened. She wore neither bonnet nor cloak, only a shawl wrapped round her head and shoulders.
"He is found!" she said, agitatedly. "Will you come with me?"
"Your son?"