"Tut, tut, Mistress Constance," he cried, half kindly, half reprovingly; "this should be a wild fancy lacking ground in reason."
Thus checked, I held my peace, but could not wholly discard this thought. Not long after—on the very morning before Mr. Genings proposed to depart out of town—I chanced to be walking homeward with him and some others from a house whither we had gone to hear his mass. As we were returning along Ludgate Hill, what should he feel but the same sensations he had done before, and which were indeed visible in him, for his limbs trembled and his face turned as white as ashes!
"You are sick," I said, for I was walking alongside of him.
"Only affected as that other day," he answered, leaning against a post for to recover himself.
I had hastily looked back, and, lo and behold I a youth in a brown cloak was walking some paces behind us. I whispered in Mr. Genings's ear:
"Look, Edmund; is this the youth you saw before?"
"O my good Lord!" he cried, turning yet more pale, "this is strange indeed! After all, it may be my brother. Go on," he said quickly; "I must get speech with him alone to discover if it should be so."
We all walked on, and he tarried behind. Looking back, I saw him accost the stranger in the brown cloak. And in the afternoon he came to tell us that this was verily John Genings, as I had with so little show of reason guessed.
"What passed between you?" I asked.
He said: