Mason and Charlotte speedily obeyed this request, and the chariot, instead of taking the ladies up Bond Street, conveyed them, the two servants, and Mr. Dykes, to the police-office.
On their arrival, Mr. Dykes conducted his witnesses into a private room, and, after an absence of about five minutes, returned with the intelligence that the night charges were just disposed of, and that the prisoner was about to be placed in the dock.
A shudder passed through Georgiana's frame; but, with a desperate effort to compose herself, she followed Mr. Dykes into the court, Miss Mordaunt and the two servants remaining in the private room until they should be summoned individually to give their testimony.
As Georgiana was a lady of rank and fortune she was not treated as a humble witness would have been, but was accommodated with a chair, Mr. Dykes assuring her, in a confidential whisper, that she need not stand up to give her evidence.
The body of the court was crowded with a motley assembly of spectators, the news that a highwayman was about to be examined having spread like wildfire throughout the neighbourhood.
Scarcely was Georgiana seated, when a sensation on the part of the crowd enabled her to judge that the accused was being brought in; and as Tom Rain leapt nimbly into the dock, she cast a rapid glance towards him—a glance in which terror was combined with indescribable disgust and aversion.
The accused affected not to notice her, but lounged in a very easy and familiar fashion over the front of the dock; surveying, first Sir Walter Ferguson, and then the clerk, with a complacency which would have almost induced an uninitiated stranger to imagine that _they_ were the prisoners and _he_ was the magistrate.
Mr. Dykes, being called upon by Sir Walter to explain the nature of the charge against the prisoner, declared that, "in consequence of information which he had received," (the invariable phraseology of old police-officers,) "he had arrested the accused on suspicion of having stopped Lady Hatfield's carriage on the preceding evening, and robbed her ladyship and her ladyship's friend of certain monies specified in an advertisement which he had caused to be inserted in that morning's paper." Mr. Dykes further stated that, having searched the prisoner, he had found upon him a considerable sum in gold; but none of the Bank-notes stolen.