The answers were all
satisfactory. With a great sigh and a little laugh, Lady Walsingham
placed her hand affectionately on that of her sister; who, saying, "God
be thanked!" began to weep.

"When had you last news from Mardykes?" asked Lady Walsingham.

"A servant was down here about four o'clock."

"O! no one since?" said she in a disappointed tone.

No one had been from the great house since, but all were well then.

"They are early people, you know, dear; and it is dark at four, and that
is as late as they could well have heard, and nothing could have
happened since--very unlikely. We have come very fast; it is only a few
minutes past two, darling."

But each felt the chill and load of their returning anxiety.

While the people at the George were rapidly getting a team of horses to,
Lady Walsingham contrived a moment for an order from the other window to
her servant, who knew Golden Friars perfectly, to knock-up the people at
Doctor Torvey's, and to inquire whether all were well at Mardykes Hall.

There he learned that a messenger had come for Doctor Torvey at ten
o'clock, and that the Doctor had not returned since. There was no news,
however, of any one's being ill; and the Doctor himself did not know
what he was wanted about. While Lady Haworth was talking to her maid
from the window next the steps, Lady Walsingham was, unobserved,
receiving this information at the other.

It made her very uncomfortable.

In a few minutes more, however, with a team of fresh horses, they were
again rapidly passing the distance between them and Mardykes Hall.

About two miles on, their drivers pulled-up, and they heard a voice
talking with them from the roadside. A servant from the Hall had been
sent with a note for Lady Walsingham, and had been ordered, if
necessary, to ride the whole way to the Three Nuns to deliver it. The
note was already in Lady Walsingham's hand; her sister sat beside her,
and with the corner of the open note in her fingers, she read it
breathlessly at the same time by the light of a carriage-lamp which the
man held to the window. It said:

My dearest love--my darling sister--dear sisters both!--in God's name,
lose not a moment. I am so overpowered and _terrified_. I cannot
explain; I can only implore of you to come with all the haste you can
make. Waste no time, darlings. I hardly understand what I write. Only
this, dear sisters; I feel that my reason will desert me, unless you
come soon. You