a speck of mud could have shown more
loyalty, more devotion, than did Gentleman Jim sweeping for bare life,
as Miss Bruce and her maid approached the crossing he had hired for
the occasion.

Maud recognised him at a glance. Not easily startled or surprised, she
bade Puckers walk on, while she took a half-crown from her purse and
put it in the sweeper's hand.

"At least it is an honest trade," said she, looking him fixedly in the
face.

The man turned pale while he received her bounty.

"It's not that, miss," he stammered. "It's not that--I only wanted to
get a look of ye. I only wanted just to hear the turn of your voice
again. No offence, miss, I'll go away now. O! can't ye give a chap a
job? It's my heart's blood as I'd shed for you, free--and never ask no
more nor a kind word in return!"

She looked him over from head to foot once more and passed on. In that
look there was neither surprise, nor indignation, nor scorn, only a
quaint and somewhat amused curiosity, yet this thief and associate of
thieves quivered, as if it had been a sun-stroke. When she passed out
of sight he bit the half-crown till it bent, and hid it away in his
breast. "I'll never part with ye," said he, "never;" unmindful of poor
Dorothea, going about her work tearful and forlorn. Gentleman Jim,
uneducated, besotted, half-brutalised as he was, had yet drunk from
the cup that poisons equally the basest and noblest of our kind. A
well-dressed, good-looking young man, walking on the other side of
the Square, did not fail to witness Tom Ryfe's farewell and Maud's
interview with the crossing-sweeper. He too looked strangely
disturbed, pacing up and down an adjoining street, more than once,
before he could make up his mind to ring a well-known bell. Verily
Miss Bruce seemed to be one of those ladies whose destiny it is to
puzzle, worry, and interest every man with whom they come in contact.

CHAPTER VII

DICK STANMORE

She had certainly succeeded in puzzling Dick Stanmore and already
began to interest him. The worry would surely follow in due time.
Dick was a fine subject for the scalpel--good-humoured, generous,
single-hearted, with faultless digestive powers, teeth, and colour to
correspond, a strong tendency to active exercise, and such a faculty
of enjoyment as, except in the highest order of intellects, seldom
lasts a man over thirty.

Like many of his kind, he _said_ he hated London, but lived there very
contentedly from Apri