Her hand holding mine trembled as I looked straight into her white, frightened countenance.
A silence fell between us. I gazed into those wonderful eyes of hers and noted her marvellous beauty now accentuated by her distress.
“Tibbie.” I exclaimed at last in a low, soft voice, scarcely above a whisper, “you are in deadly fear of the man with whom only the other day you contemplated marriage—Ellice Winsloe—the man who now intends to denounce you!”
“Who told you so?” she gasped, drawing back in an instant, and turning paler. “Who—who has betrayed my secret?”
Chapter Sixteen.
Friends and Foes.
At seven o’clock that evening I took the train from Camberwell Gate to Westminster Bridge, like the industrious compositor that I represented myself to be.
In order to assert myself more prominently in the neighbourhood I had accepted the invitation of Williams, the mineral-water foreman, who was my landlord, to have a glass of ale at the neighbouring public-house; and in the bar was introduced by him to several other working-men as his tenant. They seemed a sober, good-humoured set, all having their glass after the thirst of the day’s labour.