my coachman professed not to know; for, indeed, they were staying at but
a poor kind of place at the back of Leicester Square, of which they had
heard, as Clement told me afterwards, from one of the fishermen who had
carried them across from the Dutch coast in their disguises as a
Friesland peasant and his mother. They had some jewels of value
concealed round their persons; but their ready money was all spent before
I saw them, and Clement had been unwilling to leave his mother, even for
the time necessary to ascertain the best mode of disposing of the
diamonds. For, overcome with distress of mind and bodily fatigue, she
had reached London only to take to her bed in a sort of low, nervous
fever, in which her chief and only idea seemed to be that Clement was
about to be taken from her to some prison or other; and if he were out of
her sight, though but for a minute, she cried like a child, and could not
be pacified or comforted. The landlady was a kind, good woman, and
though she but half understood the case, she was truly sorry for them, as
foreigners, and the mother sick in a strange land.

"I sent her forwards to request permission for my entrance. In a moment
I saw Clement--a tall, elegant young man, in a curious dress of coarse
cloth, standing at the open door of a room, and evidently--even before he
accosted me--striving to soothe the terrors of his mother inside. I went
towards him, and would have taken his hand, but he bent down and kissed
mine.

"'May I come in, madame?' I asked, looking at the poor sick lady, lying
in the dark, dingy bed, her head propped up on coarse and dirty pillows,
and gazing with affrighted eyes at all that was going on.

"'Clement! Clement! come to me!' she cried; and when he went to the
bedside she turned on one side, and took his hand in both of hers, and