orth
and his companion had at length disappeared. Maunsell, he said, had
died some weeks before, after a couple of days' illness. No one seemed
to know of what disorder--general debility, it was thought; no doctor
had been called in; and not having left a will, his property went to
some distant relative. With respect to the woman, she was last
noticed, the evening of his death, sitting in the usual spot--within
sight of the gateway leading to his house--where she generally awaited
his appearance. She was not there the following morning; nor was she
seen again. As the deceased had made no disclosure respecting her, nor
left any papers that could tend to explain their connexion, all
chance, it was concluded, of clearing up the mystery was at an end for
ever. I confess this disappointed me not a little. I found I had,
whenever the strange Pair occurred to my recollection, unconsciously
entertained a conviction that I should, at some period or other, learn
their history; and now that all opportunity of so doing had vanished,
the fancies of my early youth again returned, and occupied me with
their wild suggestions for a longer time than was either pleasing or
justifiable. The coincidence, however, which had brought me so often
into contact with those singular persons, was not fated as yet to
discontinue.

CHAPTER IV.

It was, I think, about half a year from this period, that, in
returning late one evening from the neighbourhood of Russell Square,
where my father, during a short visit he was compelled to make to
town, had taken lodgings, I missed my way, and got entangled in the
intricacies of the numerous narrow streets and alleys that lie between
that quarter of London and the eastern end of Holborn. Intending to
avail myself of some of the public conveyances homewards, I had
attempted to shorten my passage to the great thoroughfares, and in
doing so had thus gone astray. As it was past ten o'clock I was
necessarily hurried, and yet the heat and heaviness of the night--it
was July--prevented me freeing myself as rapidly as I should otherwise
have done from the squalid and disagreeable avenues in which I had got
entangled. I was just pausing to enquire my way of a slatternly-looking
woman, who stood considerably in front of the door of a dirty-looking
house in one of the dirtiest lanes I had yet explored, and who, with an
apron thrown round her shoulders, to supply, it seemed to me, the absence
of their appropriate garm