At this last remark Dudleigh opened his eyes.
"He is my uncle, you know," said Edith--"that is, by marriage--and therefore he is naturally the one to whom I should look for defense against Wiggins. In that case Sir Lionel will be far better than poor dear Auntie Plympton. I'm afraid that Wiggins has already frightened her away from me."
"But how would you get to Sir Lionel?" asked Dudleigh, with a puzzled expression.
"Well, that is what I want to find out. I have no idea where he lives. But you can tell me all about him. I should have asked before, but other things interfered. I will go to him. I feel confident that he will not cast me off."
"Cast you off! I should think not," said Dudleigh; "but the difficulty is how to find him. You can get to Dudleigh Manor easily enough--every body knows where that is. But what then? Nobody is there."
"Sir Lionel there! I only wish he was. Why, is it possible that you do not know that Sir Lionel is positively not in England? He travels all the time, and only comes home occasionally. Perhaps you know the cause--his family troubles ten years ago. He had a row with his wife then, and it has blighted his life. Sir Lionel? Why, at this moment I dare say he is somewhere among the Ural Mountains, or Patagonia, or some other equally remote country. But who told you that he was in England?"
Edith was silent. She had taken it for granted that Sir Lionel lived in his own home.
"Of course, if you can only secure his address; and that I will do my utmost to find out for you. But to do this will be a work of time."
"And what can you do in the mean time? Where can you go?"
"Yes, your teacher. And you don't wish to go to the school, but to some private place near it. Now what sort of a woman is Miss Plympton? Bold and courageous?"
"I'm afraid not," said Edith, after a thoughtful pause. "I know that she loves me like a mother, and when I first came here I should have relied on her to the utmost. But now I don't know. At any rate, I think she can be easily terrified." And Edith went on to tell about Miss Plympton's letter to her, and subsequent silence.
"I think with you," said Dudleigh, after Edith had ended, "that the letter is a forgery. But what is difficult to understand is this apparent desertion of you. This may be accounted for, however, in one of two ways. First, Wiggins may actually have seen her, and frightened her in some way. You say she is timid. The other explanation of her silence is that she may be ill."