The night was indeed close and sultry. A light warm air, reeking like
the steam from a cook-shop, breathed in her face, while a low roll of
thunder, nearly lost in the noise of wheels, growled and rumbled among
the distant Surrey hills.

She followed him perseveringly through the more fashionable streets
and squares of London, tolerably silent and deserted now in the
interval between dinner and concert, ball or drum. Here and there
through open windows might be seen a few gentlemen at their wine, or
a lady in evening dress coming out for a gasp of fresh air on the
balcony overhead; but on the pavement below, a policeman under a lamp
or a lady's-maid hurrying on an errand were the only occupants, and
these took no heed of the bearded man with his parcel, nor of the
dirty gaudily-dressed woman who followed like his shadow. So they
turned down Grosvenor Place and through Belgrave Square into one of
the adjoining streets. Here Jim, slackening pace, took his hat off
and wiped his brow. Dorothea, with all her faculties on the stretch,
slipped into a portico at the very moment when he glanced round on
every side to make sure he was not watched. From this hiding-place she
observed him, to her great astonishment, ring boldly at the door of
a large handsome house. That astonishment was increased to see him
admitted without demur by an irreproachable footman, powder, plush,
and all complete. Large drops of rain began to fall, and outside
London, beyond the limits of our several gas companies, it lightened
all round the horizon.

Dorothea crept nearer the house where Jim had disappeared. On the
ground floor, in a dining-room of which the windows stood open for the
heat, she saw his figure within a few yards of her. He was unpacking
his bundle and arranging its contents on the table, where a servant
had placed a lamp when he admitted this unusual visitor. The rain fell
now in good earnest, and not a living creature remained in the street.
Dorothea cowered down by the area railings and watched.

Not for long. The dining-room door opened, and into the lamplight,
like a vision from some world of which poor Dorothea could scarcely
form the vaguest conception, came a pale haughty woman, beautiful
exceedingly, before whom Jim, her own Jim, usually so defiant, seemed
to cower and tremble like a dog. Even in that moment of bewilderment
Dorothea's eye, woman-like, marked the mode in which Miss Bruce's long
black hair was twisted, and miss