I must get on. Good-bye." With a nod
she left him and hurried on.

To Chelsea? Yes; No. 16-1/2 Tite Street--she knew. She had never seen
the house, but she had heard the number. No one ever went there. Madame
Joyselle had never been, and Theo only once. Why was he "tearing" there
at that hour? Because, of course, he wanted to be alone. There had
certainly been a row of some kind, of which Theo had not told her. The
old woman in Normandy had written, oh, yes; but then there must have
been a great _pourparler_, and even Felicite had grown angry. Poor
Felicite! To-night--oh, yes; at a dance at the Newlyns; she must give
Theo his answer. At a dance!

But how could she decide until she knew what Victor--"_Hansom!_" Her
own voice surprised her as a pistol shot might have done. "Tite Street,
Chelsea, 16-1/2."

The cabby, who was a romanticist and fed his brain on pabulum from the
pen of Mr. Fergus Hume and other ingenious concocters of peripatetic
mystery, wondered as he gave his horse a meaning lash with his whip--a
tribute to the beauty of the fare--"Wot the dickens she was h'up to,
with 'er big eyes and 'er 'ealthy pallor."

It further excited the excellent man's interest to be obliged, when he
had arrived at his destination, to remind his fare that they had done
so. "'Ere y'are, miss," he murmured soothingly down the trap. "Shall I
wait?"

CHAPTER TWELVE

The house was an old one with a broad, low front door and shallow,
much-worn oak stairs. In answer to Brigit's knock a Gamp-like person
with a hare-lip appeared, and informing her curtly that Mr. Joyselle had
come in only a few minutes before, added that she might go up--"To the
top, miss, an' there's only one door when you've got up."

Brigit almost ran up the four flights, and then, when opposite the door,
sat down on the top step and hid her face in her hands.

What should she say? Why had she come? Would he be glad to see her--or
shocked? Worse still, would he accept her coming as an act of filial
devotion?

No. That she would not allow.

Her mind, boiling, as it were, with a thousand ingredients, she could
hardly be said to be thinking. Realising perfectly that she had behaved
outrageously, sincerely ashamed of herself and full of remorse, yet her
own position and her own welfare had never for a second ceased to be her
chief concern. Suffering was of a certainty in store for some of the
actors in the drama, but she held the centre of the stage an