Surely his good angel pleaded with him in Cynthia's guise, and, looking into her face, he answered as he had never thought to answer in this world—
"Yes, Cynthia; if I took his place, I could."
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Westwood had scouted Cynthia's notion that the woman in black who seemed to be following them could possibly be a spy; nevertheless he meditated upon it with some anxiety, and resolved, on his arrival at his lodgings, to be wary and circumspect—also to show that he was on his guard. He relapsed therefore into the very uncommunicative "single gentleman" whom Mrs. Gunn, his landlady, had at first found him to be, and refused rather gruffly her invitation that afternoon to take tea with her in her own parlor in the company of herself and her niece.
"He's grumpier than ever," she said to this niece, who was no other than Sabina Meldreth, now paying a visit—on business principles—of indefinite duration to her aunt's abode in Camden Town; "and I did think that you'd melted him a bit last week, Sabina! But he's as close as wax! Let's sit down to our tea before it gets black and bitter, as he won't come."
"He must have seen me in the Gardens," said Sabina, who was dressed in the brightest of blue gowns, with red ribbons at her throat and wrists, "though I should never have thought that he would recognise me, being in black and having that thick black veil over my face."
"I don't see what you wanted to foller him for!" said Mrs. Gunn. "What business o' yours was it where he went and what he did? I don't think you'll ever make anything of him"—for Miss Meldreth had begun to harbor matrimonial designs on the unconscious Mr. Reuben Dare.
"I'm not so sure," said Sabina. "Once get a man by himself, and you can do a' most anything with him, so long as there's no other woman in the way."
"And is there another woman in the way?"