ady! An hour and a half before it was time to return!
Why?

There could be but one reason. Margaret was thinking of me, and of what
I should feel if I called at North Villa, and had to wait for her till
past midnight. I ran forward to speak to them, as they descended the
steps; but exactly at the same moment, my voice was overpowered, and my
further progress barred, by a scuffle on the pavement among the people
who stood between us. One man said that his pocket had been picked;
others roared to him that they had caught the thief. There was a
fight--the police came up--I was surrounded on all sides by a shouting,
struggling mob that seemed to have gathered in an instant.

Before I could force myself out of the crowd, and escape into the road,
Margaret and Mr. Mannion had hurried into a cab. I just saw the vehicle
driving off rapidly, as I got free. An empty cab was standing near me--I
jumped into it directly--and told the man to overtake them. After having
waited my time so patiently, to let a mere accident stop me from going
home with them, as I had resolved, was not to be thought of for a
moment. I was hot and angry, after my contest with the crowd; and could
have flogged on the miserable cab-horse with my own hand, rather than
have failed in my purpose.

We were just getting closer behind them: I had just put my head out of
the window to call to them, and to bid the man who was driving me, call,
too--when their cab abruptly turned down a bye-street, in a direction
exactly opposite to the direction which led to North Villa.

What did this mean? Why were they not going straight home?

The cabman asked me whether he should not hail them before they got
farther away from us; frankly confessing, as he put the question,
that his horse was nothing like equal to the pace of the horse ahead.
Mechanically, without assignable purpose or motive, I declined his
offer, and told him simply to follow at any distance he could. While the
words passed my lips, a strange sensation stole over me: I seemed to be
speaking as the mere mouthpiece of some other voice. From feeling hot,
and moving about restlessly the moment before, I felt unaccountably
cold, and sat still now. What caused this?

My cab stopped. I looked out, and saw that the horse had fallen. "We've
lots of time, Sir," said the driver, as he coolly stepped off the box,
"they are just pulling up further down the road." I gave him some money,
and got out immediately--deter