This favourite of fortune, then, annoyed with society's behaviour, had started forth in search of Sidney an hour after the news was learned from his father's lips. He had a great deal to say to Sidney; he had not entered into any explanations in that letter which Sidney had coolly responded to—he could say more viva voce; and now the storm was more than a year old, his cousin would surely put up with more, and listen to him.
But firstly, Maurice Hinchford had to find his cousin; and having wandered from the right track, it became a matter of some difficulty. He had strayed into a "new neighbourhood"—a place always famous for its intricacies—and he floundered about new streets, and half-finished streets, asking manifold questions of the aborigines, and receiving manifold directions, which he followed implicitly, and got lost anew in consequence.
The stragglers were few and far between, and Maurice waited patiently for the next arrival—standing under a lamp-post at the corner of a street. He had given up all hope in his own resources, and had resolved to enlist the next nondescript in his service, be his terms whatever his rapacity dictated. But the next nondescript was a woman, and he was baffled again. A young woman in a great hurry, to whom he could not offer money, and whose progress he scarcely liked to arrest, until the horror of another vigil under that melancholy gas-lamp overcame his reluctance to intrude.
"I beg pardon," he said, hastily; "I am looking for Park Place. Will you oblige me, Miss, by indicating in which direction it may lie now?"
"As straight as you can go, sir."
"Ah! but, confound it, I can't go straight. Not that I'm intoxicated," he said quickly, seeing his auditor recoil, and make preparations for a hasty retreat, "but these streets are incomprehensibly tortuous."
The listener seemed to look very intently towards him for an instant. The voice appeared to strike her.
"Whom do you want in Park Place?" was the quick answer.
"A Mr. Hinchford, of the business of Gray and Hinchford."
"You are his cousin Maurice?"