ry of State
for your release."

"No, no," said Sybil springing from her chair. "Is he here?"

"What the Secretary of State!" said the woman.

"No, no! I mean is any one here?"

"There is a coach waiting for you at the door with the messenger from
the office, and you are to depart forthwith. My husband is here, it
was he who knocked at the door. The warrant came before the office was
opened."

"My father! I must see him."

The inspector at this moment tapped again at the door and then entered.
He caught the last request of Sybil, and replied to it in the negative.
"You must not stay," he said; "you must be off immediately. I will tell
all to your father. And take a hint; this affair may be bailable or it
may not be. I can't give an opinion, but it depends on the evidence. If
you have any good man you know--I mean a householder long established
and well to do in the world--I advise you to lose no time in looking him
up. That will do your father much more good than saying good bye and all
that sort of thing."

Bidding farewell to his kind wife, and leaving many weeping messages for
her father, Sybil descended the stairs with the inspector. The office
was not opened: a couple of policemen only were in the passage, and as
she appeared one of them went forth to clear the way for Sybil to
the coach that was waiting for her. A milkwoman or two, a stray
chimney-sweep, a pieman with his smoking apparatus, and several of
those nameless nothings that always congregate and make the nucleus of
a mob--probably our young friends who had been passing the night in Hyde
Park--had already gathered round the office door. They were dispersed,
and returned again and took up their position at a more respectful
distance, abusing with many racy execrations that ancient body that from
a traditionary habit they still called the New Police.

A man in a loose white great coat, his countenance concealed by a shawl
which was wound round his neck and by his slouched hat, assisted
Sybil into the coach, and pressed her hand at the same time with great
tenderness. Then he mounted the box by the driver and ordered him to
make the best of his way to Smith's Square.

With a beating heart, Sybil leant back in the coach and clasped her
hands. Her brain was too wild to think: the incidents of her life during
the last four-and-twenty hours had been so strange and rapid that she
seemed almost to resign any quality of intelligent control over her
fortu