"To St. Pancras Station. I thought that we could more easily evade watchers at a big railway-station than anywhere else."
"They will watch the stations," said the man. "I may have got the start, and I may not. The stations are hardly safe."
"Let the man drive on for a few minutes while you tell me the reason why you think you are watched," said Cynthia, suspecting panic; "he cannot be going far out of the way, and, if we change our minds we can tell him so presently."
"Well," said Westwood, evidently recovering nerve and self-possession under the influence of his daughter's calmer manner and speaking in an easier tone, "it's that woman Meldreth—she is a spy. Who do you think came to her house yesterday but Mrs. Vane? The very woman who has most reason to dread me and to wish to get me shut up in prison, if my idea of her is true! I think she wanted to see me with her own eyes. She looked at me as if she would read me through and through."
"Where did you meet her, father?"
"In the street. I was asked to show her Mrs. Gunn's house. It was pure accident of course, but it gave us an opportunity of looking at each other."
"Did you go back to the house after that?"
"Yes, I did, my girl, because I had left my portmanteau there with papers and money, without which I should soon be in 'Queer Street.' Yes, I went back, and found Mrs. Vane gone. But the Meldreth woman had a queer look about her, and I suspected what she was about, though I don't know that I could have balked her but for my peculiar constitution. Sleeping-stuff don't have no effect on me, my dear—it never had. They tried it in the prison when I was there at first, and couldn't sleep for thinking of the woods and the open fields and my own little girl—and it nearly drove me mad. Sabina Meldreth gave me some sleeping-stuff in my tea last night."
"What for, father?"
"That's what I wanted to know. When I felt the old pricks and twitches beginning, I pretended to be very sleepy, and I lay down on the sofa and went off, as she thought, into a deep slumber. Presently she came in, and—what do you think, Cynthy?—she began to examine my hair and beard! Of course she soon saw that it would come off; and then she laughed a little to herself. 'Twenty pounds for this job,' she said—'and more perhaps afterwards. I wonder what Mrs. Vane's up to now? I'll be off to her first thing to-morrow morning. It's somebody she's got a spite against, I'll be bound!' And then she went away and left me alone, having done her work."