No doubt, he told himself, by putting the police upon her track, he would be able to find her; but such a proceeding would involve confidences, and partake to some extent of the nature of an exposure, which he could not afford. No, it must be done quietly; so, with the intention of having it done quietly, he gave a sneaky, diffident, hang-dog rap at the door, as he glanced up and down the street to see if he was observed--such a knock as might be given by a gipsy-looking woman, with her wean slung at her back, and a bundle of clothes-pegs for sale in her hand. But Richard Pellet's humble no-notice-attracting knock had as little effect inside the house as in the street at large, and, in spite of the giver's fidgety manner and uneasy glances up and down, no one answered the summons. There was no help for it; so the early caller gave another rap at the door--a single rap; for, from the effects of an ordinary double knock, he saw in imagination a score of heads at the open doors and windows of the densely-populated street, gazing at and looking down upon him as the doctor and ordainer of strait-waistcoats for the woman said to be insane, and kept so closely for years past in a room at Number 804. Quite five minutes now elapsed without his venturing to knock again, while he pretended to be absorbed in the contents of the newspaper he held in his hand. But at last his position grew painful, for a small boy bearing a big child came and sat himself upon the step, and looked at him; then two more children came and cricked their necks as they gazed up in his face, and a woman across the way also lent her attention. Richard Pellet was turning all over into a state of the most profuse perspiration, and had his hand once more raised to the knocker, when he heard a door open, apparently beneath his feet, and he started as a shrill voice from the area shouted, "What is it?" The important city man's perspiration from being cold now grew to be hot; but he felt that it was no time for being indignant, as he looked down from his height, moral and literal, upon a little old-faced wrinkle-browed girl-of-all-work, almost a child, who was rubbing her cheek with a match-box. "Missus ain't down yet," she replied, in answer to Richard's interrogations. "I'll come in then and wait," said the city man, peering down through the railings; but the girl shook her head. "She said I wasn't to let no one in. There's so many tramps and beggars about." "There!" exclaimed Richard, impatiently, as he threw down a card. "Take that up to her, and I'll wait here; or, no--give me that card back," he said, for the thought struck him that it was impossible to say where that card might go.