love you all the better. For every smart you give me you shall be repaid
with a dozen kisses. If that isn't returning good for evil may I never
handle a dice box again. There, do as you like. Lay your white hand
again on my face. The bigger debt you run up the better."

Despite his banter he was very savage and he flung her hands from him.
She at once laid hold of the strap to open the window. He burst into a
loud laugh.

"So the bird would escape," said he mockingly. "I thought as much."

She tugged at the strap but tugged in vain. The window refused to budge.
Then it flashed across her mind that it was all part of a plan. She was
to be trapped. The story of a Fleet marriage was a concoction to bait
the trap. She flung herself in the corner, turned her back upon her
captor and pulled her hood over her face.

She knew that for the time being she was helpless. What was the good of
wasting her strength in struggles, her spirit in remonstrance and be
laughed at for her pains? So she sat sullenly and turned a deaf ear to
Dorrimore's triumphant endearments.

That wrestle with the window strap had done one thing. It had told her
where she was. Lavinia knew her London well. Her rambles as a child had
not been confined to Charing Cross and St. Giles. She had often wandered
down to London Bridge. She loved the bustling life on the river; she
delighted in gazing into the shop windows of the quaint houses on the
bridge which to her youthful imagination seemed to be nodding at each
other, for so close were some that their projecting upper storeys nearly
touched.