Mrs. Gilson also thought so, but she was not sure.
“See here, miss,” she said, “you know Captain Clyne’s son?”
Henrietta’s colour rose at the name.
“Of course you do,” the landlady continued, “for if all’s true you are some sort of connection. Then you know, Miss, that he’s the apple of his father’s eye, and the more for being a lameter?”
Henrietta could not hear Anthony Clyne’s name without agitation; without vague apprehensions and a sense of coming evil. Why did they bring in the name? And what were they going to tell her about the boy—of whom in the old days she had been contemptuously jealous? She felt her face burn under the gaze of all those eyes fixed on it. And her own eyes sank.
“Well,” she muttered indistinctly, “what of him? What has he to do with this?”
“He is missing. He has been stolen.”
“Stolen?”
Her tone was one of sharp surprise.
“He was carried off last night by two men,” Bishop struck in. “His nurse was returning to the house near Newby Bridge—hard on nightfall, when she met two men on the road. They asked the name of the place, heard what it was, and asked who the child was. She told them, and they went one way and she another, but before she reached home they overtook her, seized her and bound her, and disappeared with the boy. It was dusk and she might have lain in the ditch and died. But the servants in the house went out when she did not return and found her.” He looked at Nadin. “That’s so, isn’t it?”