outside.

"Look ye 'ere, miss," he muttered in a hoarse whisper, with one leg
over the ledge, "if ever you wants a chap to do you a turn, don't ye
forget there's one inside this waistcoat as will take a leap in a
halter any day to please ye. You drop a line to 'Gentleman Jim,' at
the Sunflower, High Holborn. O! I can read, bless ye, and write and
cipher too. What I says I sticks to. No offence, miss. I wonder will I
ever see you again?"

He darted back for an instant, much to Maud's dismay, snatched a knot
of ribbon which had fallen from her dress on the carpet, and was gone.

She heard his leap on the gravel below, and his cautious footsteps
receding towards the park. Then she passed her hands over her face,
and looked about her as one who wakes from a dream.

"It was an escape, I suppose," she said, "and I ought to have been
horribly frightened; yet I never seemed to lose the upper hand with
him for a moment. How odd that even a man like that should be such a
fool. No wiser and no cooler than Mr. Ryfe. What is it, I wonder; what
is it, and how long will it last?"

[Illustration: He muttered in a hoarse whisper, with one leg over the
ledge.]




CHAPTER VI