awake now, surely. And I was going to dine at Sir James Gwatkin's, with Rayne. I stood on the pavement-edge (in Piccadilly now) and called out:
'Hansom!'
I should be there, with him, with her in ten minutes—in all human probability.
The hansom came up, and I got in, and gave the address—22 Balmoral Street—through the opened trap to the man. We set off quickly, the horse, a small beast, trotting. When we had gone a little way, I knocked up at the trap, two or three times before the man opened it, the horse's speed slackening.
'Go through the Park,' I said, 'through the Park!'
He shut down the trap, and the horse's speed quickened again. The evening was light and cool, the sun hid behind thick horizon clouds. We turned through the gates into the Park, I bent forward a little, looking at the carriages and people that we passed.
Then we swept by the Marble Arch into Oxford Street and by the mouth of the Edgware Road, up which, some way up which by a by-way to the left, lay in a small street, Maitland Street, a small house, No. 3. She would not be in yet. She would be still at her work, sitting sewing probably. Should I ever see her again? No, best not. Our paths of life went on in all but opposite directions. Poor child! 'Alone in the world, as if nobody else belonged to her.' In a hundred years, perhaps fifty, perhaps less, it would all he as if it had never been!
We drew up sharply. I looked out. It was the house all right. I threw open the flaps, and jumped on to the pavement, and went back and paid the man. Then ascended the steps, and knocked and rang as the little brass plate bade; and waited. A footman opened the door and ushered me in. Sir James was coming along the passage below the stairs, and saw me. He at once advanced, saying cordially:
'Ah, Mr. Leicester, how do you do?'
We went upstairs together slowly, I just a step behind him: then through a tall doorway with a deep-red velvet hanging, and along a room that was like a passage; and then he had opened a door and we were
