ou going?"

The question halted Sofia in the doorway.

"To find my father--wherever he is!"

She left the two staring at each other, dumbfounded and aghast.

At the far end of the passage she flung open her bedchamber door, entered,
turned up the light, and snatched her cloak and hat from pegs beneath the
curtained shelf that held her scanty wardrobe.

Adjusting these before the mirror she could hear Therese bawling at Dupont
to follow and stop her. Sofia had little fear he would find heart to
attempt that, none the less she hurried. Once her hat was adjusted there
was nothing to detain her; the best she had she stood in; no sentimental
associations invested that room, the tomb of her defrauded childhood, the
prison of her maltreated youth, to make her linger there, but only hateful
ones to speed her going.

She turned and fled.

Stumbling on the stairs, she heard Therese still screaming imprecations and
commands at Dupont, then the clumping of the man's feet as, yielding at
length, he started in pursuit.

Through the green baize door she burst into the cafe like a young tornado.
Every head turned her way with gaping mouths and protruding eyes of
astonishment as she stopped at the caisse and brazenly, in the face of them
all, plundered the till.

This was a matter of necessity. Sofia had not one shilling of her own. But
those two had robbed her, what she took was not so much as a thousandth
part of the money of which they had despoiled her. Moreover, she dared not
go out penniless to face London.

Snatching a handful of loose coin, she made for the door. But the delay had
been fatal. Dupont was now at her heels, and displaying extraordinary
agility in a man of his years of dissipation and sedentary habits. And
Therese was not far behind.

Seeing coins trickling through the fingers of the fugitive and falling to
ring and spin upon the floor, the Frenchwoman raised an anguished shriek of
"_Thief! Stop thief!_"--and such part of the audience as had remained in
its seats rose up as one man.

In the same instant Dupont's fingers clamped down on Sofia's shoulder. She
screamed, and he chuckled and dragged her back. Then his arm was struck up
by a deft hand, the girl slipped from his hold and darted out through the
doors.

Roaring with rage (now that his blood was up, his heart in the chase)
Dupont turned upon the meddler. This was young Mr. Karslake. Dupont did not
know him except by sight, but that slender, bo