e is not at home," said Mr. Wilfer. "She and Martha 'ave gone out for
the day to Greenwich. If you'd wrote a-sayin' you was goin' to call I'd
have made 'em stay till you came."

Miss Lester looked at him keenly.

"If you don't believe me," said Wilfer, "go upstairs and look at her
room."

Ada ran past him up the stairs, and quickly returned.

"It's locked," she said.

"Of course; she's quite the lady--keeps the keys 'erself," sneered
Johann. "Look 'ere, 'ere's her hat and coat; there's one of 'er boots,
so she must be comin' back afore long."

Miss Lester appeared convinced. She breathed more freely, as if a weight
had been taken off her mind.

"Here," she said, putting some gold coins in his hand, "is something to
make up for my troubling you. But I was real anxious to know if
everything was right with the gal."

Wilfer--debauched and demoralised by drink--was disposed to look at the
worst side of things; and from this point of view thought she meant the
reverse of what she said.

"Would you be very much cut up," he said slyly, "if she wasn't able to
trouble you any more or answer awkward questions, miss?"

She turned on him with a fierceness that made him recoil.

"If anything happens to that gal," she shouted, "I'll turn the police on
you. For, mind my words--I mean them--I shouldn't have cared yesterday
very much if I had learnt she was dead, but now I want her. Do you hear?
I want her, and you take care she's alive and ready when I come for
her."

Then, without vouchsafing any further information, she flounced away,
leaving Mr. Wilfer staring blankly after her, and wishing for once that
he had stayed his hand, instead of driving the girl into the miseries
and dangers of the streets.

Little did Wilfer or Miss Lester imagine that Jessica had found safety
and refuge in Adrien Leroy's chambers.

CHAPTER VI

Love is the universal epidemic, effectual in all climes and conditions;
there is no inoculation that will secure exemption from its influence;
only given a warm human heart, and there is the natural susceptibility.

So it is from high to low. The little blind god takes no count of
difference in fortune or rank in life. Dynasties fall, thrones totter to
the ground, crowns tumble to dust on kingly heads; but love rules and
lives on, immortal, triumphant, unconquerable.

Jessica had never heard of Romeo and Juliet, of Faust and Marguerite, or
King Cophetua an