he said, the moment the servant had closed the
door on her.

The doctor looked at her before he answered, and saw the danger of
driving her to extremities plainly expressed in her face.

"The time is getting on," he remonstrated, in his most persuasive
manner. "For all we know to the contrary, Mr. Armadale may be here
to-night."

"I want another day!" she repeated, loudly and passionately.

"Granted!" said the doctor, looking nervously toward the door. "Don't be
too loud--the servants may hear you. Mind!" he added, "I depend on your
honor not to press me for any further delay."

"You had better depend on my despair," she said, and left him.

The doctor chipped the shell of his egg, and laughed softly.

"Quite right, my dear!" he thought. "I remember where your despair led
you in past times; and I think I may trust it to lead you the same way
now."

At a quarter to eight o'clock that night Mr. Bashwood took up his post
of observation, as usual, on the platform of the terminus at London
Bridge. He was in the highest good spirits; he smiled and smirked in
irrepressible exultation. The sense that he held in reserve a means
of influence over Miss Gwilt, in virtue of his knowledge of her past
career, had had no share in effecting the transformation that now
appeared in him. It had upheld his courage in his forlorn life at Thorpe
Ambrose, and it had given him that increased confidence of manner
which Miss Gwilt herself had noticed; but, from the moment when he had
regained his old place in her favor, it had vanished as a motive power
in him, annihilated by the electric shock of her touch and her look.
His vanity--the vanity which in men at his age is only despair in
disguise--had now lifted him to the seventh heaven of fatuous happiness
once more. He believed in her again as he believed in the smart new
winter overcoat that he wore--as he believed in the dainty little cane
(appropriate to the dawning dandyism of lads in their teens) that he
flourished in his hand. He hummed! The worn-out old creature, who had
not sung since his childhood, hummed, as he paced the platform, the few
fragments he could remember of a worn-out old song.

The train was due as early as eight o'clock that night. At five minutes
past the hour the whistle sounded. In less than five minutes more the
passengers were getting out on the platform.

Following the instructions that had been given to him, Mr. Bashwood
made his way, as well as the cro