"To seek your fortune!"
"Yes; you know my cousin, Sophy Clarke? In one of her letters, she said she often saw you."
I nodded without speaking. I knew little of Sophia Clarke, except that she was the somewhat gay, coquettish shopwoman of a highly respectable confectioner in the Strand, whom I shall call by the name of Morris.
"I am to be Sophy's fellow shop-assistant," continued Mary Kingsford; "not, of course, at first at such good wages as she gets. So lucky for me, is it not, since I must go to service? And so kind, too, of Sophy, to interest herself for me!"
"Well, it may be so. But surely I have heard—my wife at least has—that you and Richard Westlake were engaged?—Excuse me, Mary, I was not aware the subject was a painful or unpleasant one."
"Richard's father," she replied with some spirit, "has higher views for his son. It is all off between us now," she added; "and perhaps it is for the best that it should be so."
I could have rightly interpreted these words without the aid of the partially-expressed sigh which followed them. The perilous position of so attractive, so inexperienced, so guileless a young creature, amidst the temptations and vanities of London, so painfully impressed and preoccupied me, that I scarcely uttered another word till the rapidly-diminishing rate of the train announced that we neared a station, after which it was probable we should have no further opportunity for private converse.
"Those men—those fellows at Rugby—where did you meet with them?" I inquired.
"About thirty or forty miles below Birmingham, where they entered the carriage in which I was seated. At Birmingham I managed to avoid them."
Little more passed between us till we reached London. Sophia Clarke received her cousin at the Euston station, and was profuse of felicitations and compliments upon her arrival and personal appearance. After receiving a promise from Mary Kingsford to call and take tea with my wife and her old playmate on the following Sunday, I handed the two young women into a cab in waiting, and they drove off. I had not moved away from the spot when a voice a few paces behind me, which I thought I recognized, called out, "Quick, coachee, or you'll lose sight of them!" As I turned quickly round, another cab drove smartly off, which I followed at a run. I found, on reaching Lower Seymour-street, that I was not mistaken as to the owner of the voice, nor of his purpose. The fellow I had unwigged at Rugby thrust his body half out of the cab window, and, pointing to the vehicle which contained the two girls, called out to the driver "to mind and make no mistake." The man nodded intelligence, and lashed his horse into a faster pace. Nothing that I might do could prevent the fellows from ascertaining Mary Kingsford's place of abode; and as that was all that, for the present at least, need be apprehended, I desisted from pursuit, and bent my steps homeward.