likes of you. But a rough chap needn't be a blind chap. I come in here
for to clean out your jewel-box. I tell ye fair, I don't think as I
meant to have ill-treated you, and now I know as I _couldn't_ have
done it, but I wanted them gimcracks just the same. If so be as you'd
like to see me shopped and lagged, you take and ring that there bell,
and look if I go for to move a foot from this blessed spot. There! If
so be as you bid me walk out free from that there winder, take and
count these here now at once, and see there's not one missing and not
one broke. Say the word, miss--which is it to be?"

The reaction was coming on fast. Maud dared not trust her voice, but
she pointed to the window with a gesture in which she preserved an
admirable imitation of confidence and command. Gentleman Jim threw
up the sash, but paused ere he ventured his plunge into the darkness
outside.

"Look ye 'ere, miss," he muttered in a hoarse whisper, with one leg
over the ledge, "if ever you wants a chap to do you a turn, don't ye
forget there's one inside this waistcoat as will take a leap in a
halter any day to please ye. You drop a line to 'Gentleman Jim,' at
the Sunflower, High Holborn. O! I can read, bless ye, and write and
cipher too. What I says I sticks to. No offence, miss. I wonder will I
ever see you again?"

He darted back for an instant, much to Maud's dismay, snatched a knot
of ribbon which had fallen from her dress on the carpet, and was gone.

She heard his leap on the gravel below, and his cautious footsteps
receding towards the park. Then she passed her hands over her face,
and looked about her as one who wakes from a dream.

"It was an escape, I suppose," she said, "and I ought to have been
horribly frightened; yet I never seemed to lose the upper hand with
him for a moment. How odd that even a man like that should be such a
fool. No wiser and no cooler than Mr. Ryfe. What is it, I wonder; what
is it, and how long will it last?"

[Illustration: He muttered in a hoarse whisper, with one leg over the
ledge.]

CHAPTER VI

A REVERSIONARY INTEREST

Although Dorothea could assume on occasions so bright an exterior as I
have in a previous chapter endeavoured to describe, her normal state
was undoubtedly that which is best conveyed by the epithet "grimy."
Old Mr. Bargrave, walking serenely into his office at eleven, and
meeting this handmaiden on the stairs, used to wonder how so much
dirt could accumulate o