u, be of good cheer, fair Editha," he said quite gaily. "Your
plan is good and sound, and meseems as if the wench's fortune were
already within my grasp."

"Within our grasp, you mean, Marmaduke," she said significantly.

"Our grasp of course, gracious lady," he said with a marked sneer, which
she affected to ignore. "What is mine is yours. Am I not tied to the
strings of your kirtle by lasting bonds of infinite gratitude?"

"I will start to-morrow then. By chaise to Dover and thence by coach,"
she said coldly, taking no heed of his irony. "'Twere best you did not
assume your romantic role again until after your own voyage to London.
You can give me some money I presume. I can do nothing with an empty
purse."

"You shall have the whole contents of mine, gracious Editha," he said
blandly, "some ten pounds in all, until the happy day when I can place
half a million at your feet."

PART II

CHAPTER XIV

THE HOUSE IN LONDON

It stood about midway down an unusually narrow by-street off the Strand.

A tumble-down archway, leaning to one side like a lame hen, gave access
to a dark passage, dank with moisture, whereon the door of the house
gave some eighteen feet up on the left.

The unpaved street, undrained and unutterably filthy, was ankle-deep in
mud, even at the close of this hot August day. Down one side a long
blank wall, stone-built and green with mildew, presented an unbroken
frontage: on the other the row of houses with doors perpetually barred,
and windows whereon dust and grit had formed effectual curtains against
prying eyes, added to the sense of loneliness, of insecurity, of unknown
dangers lurking behind that crippled archway, or beneath the shadows of
the projecting eaves, whence the perpetual drip-drip of soot water came
as a note of melancholy desolation.

From all the houses the plaster was peeling off in many places, a prey
to the inclemencies of London winters; all presented gray facades, with
an air of eeriness about their few windows, flush with the outside
wall--at one time painted white, no doubt, but now of uniform dinginess
with the rest of the plaster work.

There was a grim hint about the whole street of secret meetings, and of
unavowable deeds done under cover of isolation and of darkness, whilst
the great crooked mouth of the archway disclosing the blackness and
gloom of the passage beyond, suggested the lair of human wild beasts who
only went about in the night.

A