d pray of you
don't go out."

The Major whispers, "Madam, trust me I will do no such a thing. How is
she?"

I says "Major the good Lord above us only knows what burns and rages in
her poor mind. I left her sitting at her window. I am going to sit at
mine."

It came on afternoon and it came on evening. Norfolk is a delightful
street to lodge in--provided you don't go lower down--but of a summer
evening when the dust and waste paper lie in it and stray children play
in it and a kind of a gritty calm and bake settles on it and a peal of
church-bells is practising in the neighbourhood it is a trifle dull, and
never have I seen it since at such a time and never shall I see it
evermore at such a time without seeing the dull June evening when that
forlorn young creature sat at her open corner window on the second and me
at my open corner window (the other corner) on the third. Something
merciful, something wiser and better far than my own self, had moved me
while it was yet light to sit in my bonnet and shawl, and as the shadows
fell and the tide rose I could sometimes--when I put out my head and
looked at her window below--see that she leaned out a little looking down
the street. It was just settling dark when I saw _her_ in the street.

So fearful of losing sight of her that it almost stops my breath while I
tell it, I went down-stairs faster than I ever moved in all my life and
only tapped with my hand at the Major's door in passing it and slipping
out. She was gone already. I made the same speed down the street and
when I came to the corner of Howard Street I saw that she had turned it
and was there plain before me going towards the west. O with what a
thankful heart I saw her going along!

She was quite unacquainted with London and had very seldom been out for
more than an airing in our own street where she knew two or three little
children belonging to neighbours and had sometimes stood among them at
the street looking at the water. She must be going at hazard I knew,
still she kept the by-streets quite correctly as long as they would serve
her, and then turned up into the Strand. But at every corner I could see
her head turned one way, and that way was always the river way.

It may have been only the darkness and quiet of the Adelphi that caused
her to strike into it but she struck into it much as readily as if she
had set out to go there, which perhaps was the case. She went straight
down to the Terr