voice. "But how
shall I know where you are?"

"Better for you not to know, my dear. I shall put them off the scent in
this way, and you will have no idea of what has become of me. Now get my
ticket and say good-bye--as affectionate and as public as you like. It
will all tell in the long run; that bobby has his eye on us."

Cynthia did as she was desired. Her father kissed her pale, agitated
face several times, and made his adieux rather unnecessarily
conspicuous. Then Cynthia left the station, and her father made his way
to the platform, where he mingled with the crowd, and finally got away
by another door, and turned his face towards the illimitable east of
London.

Cynthia did not take a cab again. It was a relief to her to walk, and
she was in a neighborhood that she knew very well. She turned into
Euston Square, then down Woburn Place, and through Tavistock Square to
Russell Square. She could not stay away from Hubert any longer.

She knew the house--it was the place to which she had come one autumn
day when Mr. Lepel wanted to hear her sing. She had never been there
since. The square looked strangely different to her; the trees in the
garden, in spite of their green livery, gave no beauty to the scene. It
was as cheerless and as dark as it had been on the cold autumnal morning
when she had gone to learn her fate from the critic's lips; and yet the
sun was shining now, and the sky overhead was blue. But Cynthia's heart
was sadder than it had been in the days of her friendlessness and
poverty.

She rang the bell and asked for Mrs. Jenkins, who appeared almost at
once and led the girl into Hubert's deserted sitting-room.

"Oh, miss, I'm so glad you have come!" she said. "For we can't get Mr.
Lepel to be quiet at all, and we were just on the point of sending off
for you, because he calls for you constant, and the doctor, he says,
'could you get the lady that he talks about to come and sit beside him
for a little time? That might calm him,' he says; 'and if we calm him,
we may save his life.'"

"Oh, is he so ill as that?" cried Cynthia.

"He couldn't be much worse, miss, the doctor says. Can you stay, miss,
now you're here? Just for an hour or two at any rate!"

"I can stay as long as I can be of any use," said the girl desperately.
"Nobody wants me--nobody will ask for me; it is better for me to be
here."

The words fell unheeded on Mrs. Jenkins' ears. All that she cared about
was the welfare of her husban