have worn something, in place of her new clothes.
What had she put on?

Looking round the room, Amelius noticed in a corner the box in which he
had placed the first new dress that he had purchased for Sally, on the
morning after they had met. He tried to open the box: it was locked--and
the key was not to be found. The ever-ready Toff fetched a skewer from
the kitchen, and picked the lock in two minutes. On lifting the cover,
the box proved to be empty.

The one person present who understood what this meant was Amelius.

He remembered that Sally had taken her old threadbare clothes away with
her in the box, when the angry landlady had insisted on his leaving the
house. "I want to look at them sometimes," the poor girl had said, "and
think how much better off I am now." In those miserable rags she had
fled from the cottage, after hearing the cruel truth. "He had
better have left me where I was," she had said. "Cold and hunger and
ill-treatment would have laid me at rest by this time." Amelius fell on
his knees before the empty box, in helpless despair. The conclusion
that now forced itself on his mind completely unmanned him. She had
gone back, in the old dress, to die under the cold, the hunger, and the
horror of the old life.

Rufus took his hand, and spoke to him kindly. He rallied, and dashed
the tears from his eyes, and rose to his feet. "I know where to look
for her," was all he said; "and I must do it alone." He refused to enter
into any explanation, or to be assisted by any companion. "This is my
secret and hers," he answered, "Go back to your hotel, Rufus--and pray
that I may not bring news which will make a wretched man of you for the
rest of your life." With that he left them.

In another hour he stood once more on the spot at which he and Sally had
met.

The wild bustle and uproar of the costermongers' night market no longer
rioted round him: the street by daylight was in a state of dreary
repose. Slowly pacing up and down, from one end to another, he waited
with but one hope to sustain him--the hope that she might have taken
refuge with the two women who had been her only friends in the dark days
of her life. Ignorant of the place in which they lived, he had no choice
but to wait for the appearance of one or other of them in the street.
He was quiet and resolved. For the rest of the day, and for the whole
of the night if need be, his mind was made up to keep steadfastly on the
watch.

When he could