"Well—well, I believe you," said another voice, whose deep tones rolled solemnly upon the silence of the dark evening. "To all that you have proposed I must assent—I have gone too far to retreat. But we must now separate."
"And when shall I see you again?" demanded the first speaker: "because now that you have made me acquainted with the whereabouts, I shall constantly be ascertaining how things go on, and I ought therefore to be able to communicate very often with you. That is—I ought to see you frequently; for I hate doing business by letter."
"Can you not give me your own private address?" asked the individual with the deep-toned voice; "and then I might call upon you every other evening."
"Well said," exclaimed the first speaker: then, after a pause, during which Adeline distinctly heard the rustling sound of paper, he said, "Have you got a pencil in your pocket? for I can feel to write a few words in the dark."
"Yes—here is a pencil," returned the deep-toned voice.
There was another short pause.
"All right!" cried the first speaker, at length. "That bit of paper contains the name and address of the most daring fellow that London ever produced," he added with a low chuckle. "Talk of your bravos of Spain or Italy—why, they are nothing to me! And isn't it odd, too, that whenever a rich or great person wants any thing queer done for him, it is sure to be me that he gets hold of somehow or another?"
"I have no doubt that you enjoy a most extensive patronage," said the deep-toned voice, rather impatiently—and even haughtily. "But we must now separate. The day after to-morrow—in the evening—I shall call upon you."
"Good: I shall expect you," returned the other.
The two individuals then separated—each taking a different way; but one came round the angle of the ruined wall, and passed so close to Adeline that she shrank back in a dreadful state of alarm lest her presence there should be discovered;—for, mysterious as was the conversation which she had just overheard, there was one fact which it too intelligibly revealed—and this was the desperate nature of those two men's characters.