CHAPTER XXXV.
Mrs. Vane, on leaving her brother's lodgings, drove straight to Camden Town. She had reasons for wishing to see Sabina Meldreth. The house was a little difficult to find, because the street had recently been renamed and renumbered, and Mrs. Vane was forced, to her great disgust, to descend from the cab and make inquiries in her own person of various frowsy-looking women standing at their own doors. "I wish I had brought Parker," she said to herself more than once; "she would have been useful in this kind of work. Surely Sabina has given me the right address!"
"There goes the gentleman that lodges at Mrs. Gunn's!" said one of the frowsy-looking women at last. "I've heard tell that he was there, though I didn't know the number. Will you tell this lady, please, sir, what number Mrs. Gunn's is?"
The white-bearded old man who was just then passing along the street turned to Mrs. Vane.
"I shall be very happy to show the lady the house," he said half raising his felt hat from his white head with something like foreign politeness. And then he and Flossy exchanged glances which were hard and keen as steel.
He knew her well by sight; but she did not recognise him. She had seen Westwood only once or twice in her life, and this apparently gentle old man with the silvery hair did not harmonise with Flossy's impressions of the Beechfield poacher. Nevertheless she was suspicious enough to remember that all things were possible; and she made a mental note of his dark eyes and eyebrows, the latter being a little out of keeping with his very white hair. As a matter of fact, Westwood had gone too far in selecting his disguise; a more ordinary slightly-grizzled wig would have suited his general appearance better. The perruquier—an artist in his way—to whom he had applied considered picturesque effect an object not to be overlooked; and Mr. Reuben Dare was accordingly a rather too strikingly picturesque individual to be anything but theatrical in air.
He showed Mrs. Vane the house, bowed politely, and then passed down the street.
"She's come to enquire about me—I am sure of that," he said. "I'd better change my lodgings as quick as possible. I'll leave them to-morrow—to-night would look suspicious, maybe: or should I leave them now, and never go back?"
He was half inclined to adopt this course; but he was deterred by the remembrance of a pocket-book containing money which he had left locked up in his portmanteau. He could not well dispense with it; and neither Mrs. Vane nor anybody else could do him any harm, he thought, if he stayed for twenty-four hours longer at Mrs. Gunn's. But he trusted a little too much to the uncertainties of fate.
"Well, Sabina," said Mrs. Vane coolly, as, with a general air of bewilderment, that young person appeared before her in Mrs. Gunn's best parlor, "I suppose that you hardly expected to see me here?"