wever was her only clue in the urgent adventure on which
she had embarked.

She cast an anxious glance at the clock of St Martin's as she passed
that church: the hand was approaching the half hour of seven. She urged
on the driver; they were in the Strand; there was an agitating stoppage;
she was about to descend when the obstacle was removed; and in a few
minutes they turned down the street which she sought.

"What number. Ma'am?" asked the cabman.

"'Tis a coffee-house; I know not the number nor the name of him who
keeps it. 'Tis a coffee-house. Can you see one? Look, look, I pray you!
I am much pressed."

"Here's a coffee-house, Ma'am," said the man in a hoarse voice.

372

"How good you are! Yes; I will get out. You will wait for me, I am
sure?"

"All right," said the cabman, as Sybil entered the illumined door. "Poor
young thing! she's wery anxious about summut."

Sybil at once stepped into a rather capacious room, fitted up in the
old-fashioned style of coffee-rooms, with mahogany boxes, in several of
which were men drinking coffee and reading newspapers by a painful glare
of gas. There was a waiter in the middle of the room who was throwing
some fresh sand upon the floor, but who stared immensely when looking up
he beheld Sybil.

"Now, Ma'am, if you please," said the waiter inquiringly.

"Is Mr Gerard here?" said Sybil.

"No. Ma'am; Mr Gerard has not been here to-day, nor yesterday
neither"--and he went on throwing the sand.

"I should like to see the master of the house," said Sybil very humbly.

"Should you, Ma'am?" said the waiter, but he gave no indication of
assisting her in the fulfilment of her wish.

Sybil repeated that wish, and this time the waiter said nothing. This
vulgar and insolent neglect to which she was so little accustomed
depressed her spirit. She could have encountered tyranny and oppression,
and she would have tried to struggle with them; but this insolence of
the insignificant made her feel her insignificance; and the absorption
all this time of the guests in their newspapers aggravated her nervous
sense of her utter helplessness. All her feminine reserve and modesty
came over her; alone in this room among men, she felt overpowered,
and she was about to make a precipitate retreat when the clock of the
coffee-room sounded the half hour. In a paroxysm of nervous excitement
she exclaimed, "Is there not one among you who will assist me?"

All the newspaper readers put down th