"Something urges me to run," she repeated. "We must go directly home."
He quickened his step with hers, responding to the anxiety which had
come into her tone, but experiencing nothing of it in his heart. What he
did feel was the certainty that his day of careless ease was over. The
sky seemed suddenly to have lost its brightness. The birds had fallen
silent. The crowds of people seemed less festive. The world of work-worn
men rolled back upon them in a noisy flood as they caught a car and
went speeding down the squalid avenue. Leo's anxiety seemed to increase
rather than to lessen as they neared her home. "There's been some
accident!" she insisted. "I can't tell what it is, but I think your
mother has been hurt."
He could not believe that anything serious had happened to his mother;
but when they alighted to walk across the boulevard he was quite as
eager to reach the house as she.
The man at the door wore an expression of well-governed concern, which
led Leo to sharply ask: "What is it, Ferguson? What has happened?"
"They have taken her, Miss."
"Taken? Who? What? Who have taken her?"
"The bailiff, Miss."
"The bailiff?"
"Yes, Miss, the officers came with a warrant just as Mrs. Ollnee was
sitting down to luncheon, and it was ever as much as she could do to get
them to wait till she had finished. Mrs. Joyce has gone with her."
Leo confronted Victor with large eyes. "That was the precise moment when
I had my sensation of alarm."