His first step on leaving Queenstown, was to secure a suitable disguise, and as his skin was tanned by exposure, and he now wore a heavy beard in place of the well shaven chin, he felt that he had little to fear. He reached London early in the evening, and proceeded at once to secure modest quarters in a quiet street.
From thence he sauntered out and was soon rattling over the stones in a hired hansom on his way to the well remembered house in Surrey. Whether he expected to find Stella and Julia still there, would be hard to guess, for his was a nature uninfluenced by surprises, but when he found, instead of the dark, unassuming house, nothing but a hideous pile of burnt and blackened timbers, a look of consternation did show itself upon his usually unruffled features.
What had been the fate of the beautiful girl whom he had left in perfect health and strength within these walls? Had she escaped, or were her ashes now mingling with the gruesome mass upon which the moon was casting such a melancholy light? He hardly knew what had prompted him to take this dismal drive, for he had not even dreamed of again entering Julia Webber's door. He knew, too well, that crimes committed beneath her roof were never allowed further circulation, and within Julia Webber's veins ran the blood of that hot-headed nation, where the Vendetta is perpetuated with true, religious zeal.
No, he had not dreamed of entering those forbidden precincts, and now, contempt for his own morbid curiosity filled his mind, and with a hasty order to the driver, he sank back once more upon the cushions of the comfortable conveyance.
Back to London he drove, looking out idly over the water as he crossed the bridge, but little dreaming that but for accidental aid, a human being would now be sleeping in the cold embrace of the sluggish river, and that crime, like many others, would be charged to his account in the day of divine reckoning. It is probable that if he had known and fully realized that fact, its realization would have made his expression none the less confident, or his indifference to his ultimate fate no whit less thorough.
Men like Maurice Sinclair, who chance the gravest issues of life, are more than glad to "trust to luck" their final venture into the great unknown, and the "fear and trembling" with which we are told "each to work out his own salvation," are conditions totally unknown to natures like theirs.
If he argued the matter at all, it was merely to say that the power that created the "inclinations of a man's heart evil from his youth" was also the power upon which all responsibility consequent upon those evil inclinations, should rest. Probably, he added, moreover, that a power capable of implanting evil in the heart of man could as readily have sown the seeds of good, and if evil was the seed, evil must have been the harvest sought. Thus, leaving out the human labor decreed for the gaining of salvations, he, like many others, shifted all responsibility and the possibilities of a mistaken theory never occurred to him.
He had not seen Elizabeth since the night when she and her child—her child and his—had fallen so unceremoniously into his arms on a windy street corner.
He remembered, without a blush, how he had cursed her when she begged for shelter, but finally, fearing she would follow and annoy him, he had taken her away down into Whitechapel, with whose vilest passages he was marvelously well acquainted, and there secured for her a miserable room, which she, being weary and sick at heart and having no alternative, was only too thankful to accept.
Another reason for this choice of location for Elizabeth's future home was due to the fact that a certain Mongolian, whose friendship he valued, was living in that particular vicinity.