It was quite out of his own way to go all along Gower street and eastward down the Euston Road, yet that was what he did. He saw the tall slight figure stop at an iron gate, push it open, and walk up the flagged pavement to the door of a dingy but highly respectable-looking house. The Euston Road is a neighborhood not greatly affected by people of fastidious taste; and Hubert wondered, with a shrug of the shoulders, why Miss West had found a lodging in the very midst of its ceaseless maddening roar. He passed the house with a slow step, and as he did so he read an inscription on the brass plate which adorned the gate by which Cynthia had entered—
"Mrs. Wadsley.
"Select Boarding-House for Ladies and Gentlemen.
"Moderate Terms."
"Very moderate and very select, no doubt," thought Hubert cynically. "Now is that girl making a fool of me, or is she not? All those pretty airs might so easily be put on by a clever actress. I shall find her out to-morrow. She can act a little—I know that; but, if she can't sing, after what she has said, she may go to Jericho for me! And, if she does not come at all, why, then I shall know that she is an arrant little impostor, and that I am a confounded fool!"
"He stopped to light a cigar under a lamp-post, and a slight smile played over his features as he struck the match.
"She's a beautiful girl," he said to himself; "if she does turn out an impostor, I shall be rather sorry. But, by Jove, I don't believe she will!"
CHAPTER XIV.
"Shall I take off my hat before I sing?" said Miss West calmly.
She was in Hubert's sitting-room. Mr. Lepel had the drawing-room floor of a large and fine old house in Russell square—a floor which contained two drawing-rooms opening out of each other, a bed and bath-room, and a small den, generally called a smoking-room, although its master's pipes and cigars were to be found in all corners of the apartments. Hubert had partially furnished the rooms for himself, and thus done away with the bare and ungarnished appearance usually characteristic of a London lodging.