ad nearly
made the circuit of the garden thus, before the figure of a lady sitting
alone under one of the trees, attracted my attention. I stopped--looked
intently towards her--and saw that it was Clara.

Her face was almost entirely turned from me; but I knew her by her
dress, by her figure--even by her position, simple as it was. She was
sitting with her hands on a closed book which rested on her knee. A
little spaniel that I had given her lay asleep at her feet: she seemed
to be looking down at the animal, as far as I could tell by the position
of her head. When I moved aside, to try if I could see her face, the
trees hid her from sight. I was obliged to be satisfied with the little
I could discern of her, through the one gap in the foliage which gave
me a clear view of the place where she was sitting. To speak to her, to
risk the misery to both of us of saying farewell, was more than I dared
trust myself to do. I could only stand silent, and look at her--it might
be for the last time!--until the tears gathered in my eyes, so that I
could see nothing more. I resisted the temptation to dash them away.
While they still hid her from me--while I could not see her again, if I
would--I turned from the garden view, and left the Square.

Amid all the thoughts which thronged on me, as I walked farther and
farther away from the neighbourhood of what was once my home; amid all
the remembrances of past events--from the first day when I met Margaret
Sherwin to the day when I stood by her grave--which were recalled by the
mere act of leaving London, there now arose in my mind, for the first
time, a doubt, which from that day to this has never left it; a doubt
whether Mannion might not be tracking me in secret along every step of
my way.

I stopped instinctively, and looked behind me. Many figures were moving
in the distance; but the figure that I had seen in the churchyard was
nowhere visible among them. A little further on, I looked back again,
and still with the same result. After this, I let a longer interval
elapse before I stopped; and then, for the third time, I turned round,
and scanned the busy street-scene behind me, with eager, suspicious
eyes. Some little distance back, on the opposite side of the way, I
caught sight of a man who was standing still (as I was standing), amid
the moving throng. His height was like Mannion's height; and he wore
a cloak like the cloak I had seen on Mannion, when he approached me at
Marga