Miss Bellamy felt it as a great deprivation that she could not go to see Eleanor, whom she had known and loved from infancy. But had she done so, Eleanor would have certainly been seen in Ormond Square before many hours were over--and then, what a meeting might there not have been! It was requisite that Eleanor should believe that Miss Bellamy had gone abroad for a short time, and the latter lady went out less frequently than she would otherwise have done, so great was her dread of unexpectedly encountering Miss Lloyd in the street. "What are we to do now that we have found Jacoby?" said Gerald to Murray the day after their expedition into the City. "That is just what I want you to tell me," was Murray's complacent rejoinder, as he took one of Gerald's hands between his thin palms and patted it gently. "Your knowledge of the world will enable you to say what the next step ought to be." "I am afraid that my knowledge of the world, as you call it, is altogether at fault in this instance," said Gerald, with a dubious shake of the head. "To find a man, even in the great wilderness of London, is an altogether different thing from working up a chain of evidence strong enough to convict him of a crime committed twenty years ago. "But don't you see, Gerald," argued Murray, in his quietly earnest way, "that the very fact of our having found this man constitutes the first link in the chain? All the proofs in the world would have availed us nothing had we not been able to find him. But now that we have got the first link complete, you may depend upon it that the forging of the second will follow in due course." He spoke with an air of such thorough conviction, that for a moment or two Gerald hardly knew how to answer him. "I am certainly at a nonplus," he said at last. "I was never more in the dark in my life. Have you any objection to my consulting Byrne?" "No objection in the world. Consult anybody and everybody, as may seem best to you." "Should I find it necessary to do so, have I your permission to tell him everything?" "You have: my full permission." "Mind you, I don't build any hopes on my interview with Byrne. I don't see how he can possibly help us; but still I will consult him." "And out of that consultation the forging of the second link will be accomplished," said Murray. Again Gerald shook his head. Slightly exasperating to him was Murray's air of thorough conviction, unbacked as it was by the least fragment of proof, or even the vaguest suggestions as to either how or where such proof might be forthcoming.