Celia nodded. "I must go back," she said. "I was not able to begin my work so early as usual this morning."
"Not feeling well?" he said, anxiously, and with a glance at her face which, he had noticed, was paler than usual. "I suppose you've got the Reading-Room headache. Everybody gets it; it's the general stuffiness of the place. They can't help it—the officials, I mean; they've tried all sorts of dodges for ventilation; it's better than it used to be; but it's still crammed full of headache."
"No; I've been worried this morning," said Celia, more to herself than to him.
"Oh, I'm sorry!" he said, in a voice full of a boy's ready sympathy. "Look here! Is it anything I can help you with? I mean——" He grew red, and stammered. "Oh, of course, you'll laugh; and it's like my cheek, but—you helped me, you know—and we're brothers and sisters in misfortune, working on the same treadmill—I'd do anything for you—it would be a pleasure——"
Celia sighed as she smiled, and wondered idly how he would respond if she said, "Well, find a man for me, a man whose name I don't know, to whose whereabouts I have not the slightest clue." She shook her head.
"It is very good of you," she said; "but you could not help me; no one could."
"I am sorry," he murmured. "I should have loved to have done something for you; perhaps I may some day—lion and the mouse, you know. It's a rum world. You'll find my address on the manuscript," he added, shyly, as she rose.
He did not follow her; but later in the afternoon Celia caught sight of him seated at the farther end of the Reading Room. He was looking in her direction, but, as his eyes met hers, he dropped them and bent over his work. It was evident that he had changed his place lest she should think he was intruding on her.
As she entered the courtyard of Brown's Buildings, Celia bought an evening paper. If she had mistaken the significance of the old gentleman's message and the man who haunted her thoughts had been arrested, the case might be reported. She scanned the police news anxiously; but there was no report, and she was laying the paper down when her eye caught a familiar name in a paragraph. She read the few lines in a kind of stupor, with a sense of unreality; and when she had finished reading she stood with the paper gripped in her hand, and staring stupidly before her.
The paragraph ran thus:—