e
me before you go; but never come here again."

Their eyes met, and then some instinct prompted her to whisper very
low--"Could you not, even now, save my father if you tried?"

Surely his good angel pleaded with him in Cynthia's guise, and, looking
into her face, he answered as he had never thought to answer in this
world--

"Yes, Cynthia; if I took his place, I could."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Westwood had scouted Cynthia's notion that the woman in black who seemed
to be following them could possibly be a spy; nevertheless he meditated
upon it with some anxiety, and resolved, on his arrival at his lodgings,
to be wary and circumspect--also to show that he was on his guard. He
relapsed therefore into the very uncommunicative "single gentleman" whom
Mrs. Gunn, his landlady, had at first found him to be, and refused
rather gruffly her invitation that afternoon to take tea with her in her
own parlor in the company of herself and her niece.

"He's grumpier than ever," she said to this niece, who was no other than
Sabina Meldreth, now paying a visit--on business principles--of
indefinite duration to her aunt's abode in Camden Town; "and I did think
that you'd melted him a bit last week, Sabina! But he's as close as
wax! Let's sit down to our tea before it gets black and bitter, as he
won't come."

"He must have seen me in the Gardens," said Sabina, who was dressed in
the brightest of blue gowns, with red ribbons at her throat and wrists,
"though I should never have thought that he would recognise me, being in
black and having that thick black veil over my face."

"I don't see what you wanted to foller him for!" said Mrs. Gunn. "What
business o' yours was it where he went and what he did? I don't think
you'll ever make anything of him"--for Miss Meldreth had begun to harbor
matrimonial designs on the unconscious Mr. Reuben Dare.

"I'm not so sure," said Sabina. "Once get a man by himself, and you can
do a' most anything with him, so long as there's no other woman in the
way."

"And is there another woman in the way?"

"Yes, aunt Eliza, there is."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Gunn, emptying the water-jug into the
tea-pot in pure absence of mind. "You saw him with one, did you?"

"Yes, aunt Eliza, I did."

"And what was she like, Sabina?"

"Well, some folks would call her handsome," said Sabina dubiously; "and
she was dressed like a lady--I'll say that for her. But what's odd is
that I'm nearly sure