yship. Her deepest soundings were on two or three
occasions of finding herself almost sure that, if she dared, her
ladyship's lover would have gathered relief from "speaking" to her. She
literally fancied once or twice that, projected as he was toward his
doom, her own eyes struck him, while the air roared in his ears, as the
one pitying pair in the crowd. But how could he speak to her while she
sat sandwiched there between the counter-clerk and the sounder?

She had long ago, in her comings and goings made acquaintance with Park
Chambers and reflected as she looked up at their luxurious front that
they of course would supply the ideal setting for the ideal speech. There
was not an object in London that, before the season was over, was more
stamped upon her brain. She went roundabout to pass it, for it was not
on the short way; she passed on the opposite side of the street and
always looked up, though it had taken her a long time to be sure of the
particular set of windows. She had made that out finally by an act of
audacity that at the time had almost stopped her heart-beats and that in
retrospect greatly quickened her blushes. One evening she had lingered
late and watched--watched for some moment when the porter, who was in
uniform and often on the steps, had gone in with a visitor. Then she
followed boldly, on the calculation that he would have taken the visitor
up and that the hall would be free. The hall _was_ free, and the
electric light played over the gilded and lettered board that showed the
names and numbers of the occupants of the different floors. What she
wanted looked straight at her--Captain Everard was on the third. It was
as if, in the immense intimacy of this, they were, for the instant and
the first time, face to face outside the cage. Alas! they were face to
face but a second or two: she was whirled out on the wings of a panic
fear that he might just then be entering or issuing. This fear was
indeed, in her shameless deflexions, never very far from her, and was
mixed in the oddest way with depressions and disappointments. It was
dreadful, as she trembled by, to run the risk of looking to him as if she
basely hung about; and yet it was dreadful to be obliged to pass only at
such moments as put an encounter out of the question.

At the horrible hour of her first coming to Cocker's he was always--it
was to be hoped--snug in bed; and at the hour of her final departure he
was of course--she