"I do not consider Mr. Franklyn worse or better," he said, in answer to Henry's inquiries. "He is quieter to-day, but with no lucid intervals. I think, however, that the disease is working itself out, and there is nothing for us but patience. Will you see him?"
"No, thank you, I think not to-day; but you will let me know when a change takes place?"
"Without fail, Mr. Halford, you may depend upon that."
The gentlemen parted cordially, and Henry, calling a cab, was driven to the Euston Station, almost dreading the return home, where he should appear as the bearer of such painful tidings.
While in the train Henry Halford reflected anxiously on what could be deposited in this carpet bag to cause his brother-in-law such painful anxiety. He had also not been able to discover to what steamer he was proceeding when attempting to cross the plank. All he could ascertain from the men about the wharf was that two or three steamers were moored alongside each other, one of them being a large Melbourne packet.
"Arthur could not have intended to leave England, or his children," said Henry to himself, "without informing us of his intentions, or taking leave of them."
This idea seemed so utterly improbable that Henry dismissed it from his mind as absurd.
"I will say nothing to excite suspicion at home," he thought. "There is real trouble enough in his illness without adding to it by conjecture of evil. We must wait patiently, and hope and pray for the poor fellow's recovery."
Henry Halford did not know that Arthur's boxes had been carried on shore from the Melbourne packet at Gravesend because the passenger whose name they bore was not on board when the ship arrived there. But the name on these boxes was not Franklyn.
Henry's appearance at Englefield Grange was hailed with trembling anxiety.