much
food for thought. I thanked him for his assistance, and returned on foot
to my rooms at the hospital.

I was now, however, in a somewhat different position for tracking Hilda
from that which I occupied before my interview with the famous counsel.
I felt certain by this time that Hilda Wade and Maisie Yorke-Bannerman
were one and the same person. To be sure, it gave me a twinge to think
that Hilda should be masquerading under an assumed name; but I waived
that question for the moment, and awaited her explanations. The great
point now was to find Hilda. She was flying from Sebastian to mature
a new plan. But whither? I proceeded to argue it out on her own
principles; oh, how lamely! The world is still so big! Mauritius, the
Argentine, British Columbia, New Zealand!

The letter I had received bore the Basingstoke postmark. Now a person
may be passing Basingstoke on his way either to Southampton or Plymouth,
both of which are ports of embarcation for various foreign countries.
I attached importance to that clue. Something about the tone of Hilda's
letter made me realise that she intended to put the sea between us. In
concluding so much, I felt sure I was not mistaken. Hilda had too big
and too cosmopolitan a mind to speak of being "irrevocably far from
London," if she were only going to some town in England, or even to
Normandy, or the Channel Islands. "Irrevocably far" pointed rather to a
destination outside Europe altogether--to India, Africa, America: not to
Jersey, Dieppe, or Saint-Malo.

Was it Southampton or Plymouth to which she was first bound?--that was
the next question. I inclined to Southampton. For the sprawling lines
(so different from her usual neat hand) were written hurriedly in
a train, I could see; and, on consulting Bradshaw, I found that the
Plymouth expresses stop longest at Salisbury, where Hilda would,
therefore, have been likely to post her note if she were going to the
far west; while some of the Southampton trains stop at Basingstoke,
which is, indeed, the most convenient point on that route for sending
off a letter. This was mere blind guesswork, to be sure, compared with
Hilda's immediate and unerring intuition; but it had some probability
in its favour, at any rate. Try both: of the two, she was likelier to be
going to Southampton.

My next move was to consult the list of outgoing steamers. Hilda had
left London on a Saturday morning. Now, on alternate Saturdays, the
steamers of the