before I got
back. There is no help for it but to wait till events enlighten me. If
there is anything serious in what has happened, I shall soon discover
it."

"Five o'clock.--It _is_ serious. Ten minutes since, I was in my bedroom,
which communicates with the sitting-room. I was just coming out, when I
heard a strange voice on the landing outside--a woman's voice. The next
instant the sitting-room door was suddenly opened; the woman's voice
said, 'Are these the apartments you have got to let?' and though the
landlady, behind her, answered, 'No! higher up, ma'am,' the woman came
on straight to my bedroom, as if she had not heard. I had just time to
slam the door in her face before she saw me. The necessary explanations
and apologies followed between the landlady and the stranger in the
sitting-room, and then I was left alone again.

"I have no time to write more. It is plain that somebody has an interest
in trying to identify me, and that, but for my own quickness, the
strange woman would have accomplished this object by taking me by
surprise. She and the man who followed me in the street are, I suspect,
in league together; and there is probably somebody in the background
whose interests they are serving. Is Mother Oldershaw attacking me
in the dark? or who else can it be? No matter who it is; my present
situation is too critical to be trifled with. I must get away from this
house to-night, and leave no trace behind me by which I can be followed
to another place."

"August 3d.--Gary Street, Tottenham Court Road.--I got away last night
(after writing an excuse to Midwinter, in which 'my invalid mother'
figured as the all-sufficient cause of my disappearance); and I have
found refuge here. It has cost me some money; but my object is attained!
Nobody can possibly have traced me from All Saints' Terrace to this
address.

"After paying my landlady the necessary forfeit for leaving her without
notice, I arranged with her son that he should take my boxes in a cab to
the cloak-room at the nearest railway station, and send me the ticket
in a letter, to wait my application for it at the post-office. While he
went his way in one cab, I went mine in another, with a few things for
the night in my little hand-bag.

"I drove straight to the milliner's shop, which I had observed, when
I was there yesterday, had a back entrance into a mews, for the
apprentices to go in and out by. I went in at once, leaving the cab
waiting fo