affirmative.

"There was a Mr. Sherwin I once knew," I said, forging in those words
the first link in the long chain of deceit which was afterwards to
fetter and degrade me--"a Mr. Sherwin who is now, as I have heard,
living somewhere in the Hollyoake Square neighbourhood. He was a
bachelor--I don't know whether my friend and your master are the
same?"

"Oh dear no, Sir! My master is a married man, and has one
daughter--Miss Margaret--who is reckoned a very fine young lady, Sir!"
And the man grinned as he spoke--a grin that sickened and shocked me.

I was answered at last: I had discovered all. Margaret!--I had heard
her name, too. Margaret!--it had never hitherto been a favourite name
with me. Now I felt a sort of terror as I detected myself repeating
it, and finding a new, unimagined poetry in the sound.

Could this be love?--pure, first love for a shopkeeper's daughter,
whom I had seen for a quarter of an hour in an omnibus, and followed
home for another quarter of an hour? The thing was impossible. And
yet, I felt a strange unwillingness to go back to our house, and see
my father and sister, just at that moment.

I was still walking onward slowly, but not in the direction of home,
when I met an old college friend of my brother's, and an acquaintance
of mine--a reckless, good-humoured, convivial fellow. He greeted me at
once, with uproarious cordiality; and insisted on my accompanying him
to dine at his club.