The dinner was kept back so long that nobody eat any of it, out of the servants' hall. Mrs. Wornock spent a troubled evening in the music-room, full of harassing fears; while grooms rode here and there--to Marsh House, to inquire if Mr. Wornock was dining there; to Matcham Road Station, to ask if he had left by any train, up or down the line; to the Vicarage, a most unlikely place, and to other houses where it was just possible, but most improbable, that he should allow himself to be detained; but nowhere within the narrow circle of Matcham life was Mr. Wornock to be heard of. "Pray don't be anxious about Geoffrey," Suzette wrote, in answer to Mrs. Wornock's hastily scribbled note of inquiry; "you know how erratic he is. He was vexed at something I said about Allan this morning, and he has gone off somewhere in a huff. Keep up your spirits, chère mère. I will be with you early to-morrow morning. _I_ am not frightened." "She is not frightened! If she loved him as I do, she would be as anxious as I am," commented Mrs. Wornock, when she had read Suzette's letter. CHAPTER XII. "IT IS THE STARS." Morning brought no relief of mind to Mrs. Wornock, since it brought no news of her son; but before night there was even greater anxiety at Beechhurst, where Allan Carew's mother arrived late in the evening, summoned by a letter from her son, despatched from Southampton on the previous day, announcing his arrival, and asking her to join him at Beechhurst. "I would go straight to Suffolk," he wrote, "knowing how anxious my dear, tender-hearted mother will be to welcome her wanderer home, only--only I think you know that there is some one at Matcham about whose feelings I have still a shadow of doubt, still a lingering hope. I go there first, where perhaps I may meet you; and if I find that faint hope to be only a delusion, I know you will sympathize with my final disappointment. "I have passed through many adventures and some dangers since I left the great lake. I have been ill, and I have been lonely; but I come back to England the same man who went away--unchanged in heart and mind. However altered you may find the outer man, the inner man is the same." Having telegraphed from Waterloo to announce her arrival at Matcham Road Station, Lady Emily was bitterly disappointed at not finding her son waiting for her on the platform. She looked eagerly out into the November darkness, searching for the well-known figure among the few people standing here and there along the narrow platform. There was no Allan, and there was no Beechhurst carriage waiting for her. The station-master recognized her as she alighted, and came to assist in the selection of her luggage, while a porter ran off to order a fly from the inn outside. "Mr. Carew was expected home yesterday. Did he come?" asked Lady Emily, with that faint sickness of despair which follows on such a disappointment.