urse to be pursued was clear.
She took the first train to London.

Caledonian Road is a great channel of traffic running directly north
from King's Cross to Holloway. It is doubtful whether London can show
any thoroughfare of importance more offensive to eye and ear and
nostril. You stand at the entrance to it, and gaze into a region of
supreme ugliness; every house front is marked with meanness and
inveterate grime; every shop seems breaking forth with mould or
dry-rot; the people who walk here appear one and all to be employed in
labour that soils body and spirit. Journey on the top of a tram-car
from King's Cross to Holloway, and civilisation has taught you its
ultimate achievement in ignoble hideousness. You look off into narrow
side-channels where unconscious degradation has made its inexpugnable
home, and sits veiled with refuse. You pass above lines of railway,
which cleave the region with black-breathing fissure. You see the
pavements half occupied with the paltriest and most sordid wares; the
sign of the pawnbroker is on every hand; the public-houses look and
reek more intolerably than in other places. The population is dense,
the poverty is undisguised. All this northward-bearing tract, between
Camden Town on the one hand and Islington on the other, is the valley
of the shadow of vilest servitude. Its public monument is a cyclopean
prison: save for the desert around the Great Northern Goods Depot, its
only open ground is a malodorous cattle-market. In comparison, Lambeth
is picturesque and venerable, St. Giles's is romantic, Hoxton is clean
and suggestive of domesticity, Whitechapel is full of poetry, Limehouse
is sweet with sea-breathings.

Hither Mrs. Ormonde drove from Victoria Station. The neighbourhood was
unknown to her save by name. On entering the Caledonian Road, her
cabman had to make inquiries for Bank Street, which he at length found
not far from the prison. He drew up before a small coffee-shop, on the
window whereof was pasted this advertisement: 'Dine here! Best quality.
Largest quantity! Lowest price.' Over the door was the name 'Gandle.'

Mrs. Ormonde bade the driver wait, and entered. It was the dinner-hour
of this part of the world. Every available place was occupied by men,
some in their shirt-sleeves, who were doing ample justice to the fare
set before them by Mrs. Gandle and her daughter. Beyond the space
assigned to the public was a partition of wood, four feet high, with a
door in th