Gray glanced for a moment at Albert, but it was evident he knew him not. Nothing was further from Gray’s thoughts than a meeting with Albert Seyton; and, in fact, since Ada had left him, he scarcely regarded Albert Seyton as in any way connected with him or his fortunes, and never for a moment took the trouble to speculate upon what he would or could do or say, were they to meet accidentally.
“Where are you coming to now?” cried Gray’s boatman.
“Nowhere’s partiklar,” was the reply of the other; “where are you?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Oh, nothink—nothink—only I’d a let you lay hold behind.”
Gray’s waterman, with a hearty curse, resumed his oars and gave up the parley.
“Now, I bethink me,” said Gray, in a low tone, “you may put me in at the small stairs, by Buckingham-street.”
“Yes, your honour. We are just there.”
“Good. That will do.”
The stairs at the end of Buckingham-street led up to a handsome garden then, and were themselves of an ancient and decayed appearance, being worn in the centre quite into deep hollows, and withal so rickety and injured by time and rough usage, that it required some steadiness to ascend them. Jacob Gray, however, from that very reason, thought it a safe place of landing, and when the head of his boat was moored to one of the crumbling piles, that had been rotting in the bed of the river for more than fifty years, he walked cautiously along the seats, and after liberally paying the waterman, he commenced carefully ascending the slippery time-worn steps.