For it happened that the solicitor had not seen her, and had continued his route along Fleet Street, when she darted into Devereux Court. The steps she had heard behind her were not her father's. The person who had spoken was a stranger, young and of pleasing exterior. It was no other than Mr. Thomas Hudson.
On his way to the Devereux Court entrance to the Temple, he had seen this girl crouching in the doorway. With the gallantry and sympathy of an Irishman, and really thinking that she was ill, he came to the rescue. Not that his motives for this were altogether unselfish. He saw that the girl was young and graceful of form, and her face, he imagined, must be agreeable also, to be consistent with the rest. He had nothing to do for the moment, and was only too glad to fall into an adventure with a pretty woman.
She looked at him wildly for a few seconds, then cried:
"Why, you are not—" and she checked herself.
"No I am not," he promptly replied; "are you afraid of someone then. Is any blackguard following you?"
Her eyes wandered round like those of an animal in presence of a great danger. Weariness and the reaction after her excitement had dulled her courage.
"Yes, I am hunted," she said at last, sadly.
"Hunted! by whom?" asked the barrister, becoming rather suspicious that his new friend might prove to be a runaway pickpocket, or something else bad—"by whom?"
She seemed only then to call her faculties together, to realise that she was talking to, nay, confiding in, a stranger. Her cold collected look returned to her, and it must be confessed that she did not appear nearly as pretty as with her late timid expression.