Gray had calculated his chances and position well. He stood as free as ever from any attempt against his life by Learmont or the savage smith. Ada, even if she should suddenly leave him, scarcely knew enough to be thoroughly dangerous. Sir Francis Hartleton had but an indistinct knowledge of his person, and even should he meet him in the public streets, he could hardly hit upon him as being the man who had merely flashed across his eyes for a moment. Besides, it was possible to make sufficient alterations in his personal appearance to deceive those who were not very well acquainted with his general aspect and appearance. Then he need not go from home above four times, perhaps, in that whole month, even provided he remained so long in London, and on those occasions it would only be to creep cautiously from his own place of abode to Learmont’s house and back again, so that the risk would be but small of meeting the magistrate or Albert Seyton, who were the only two persons at all interested in his capture. His threats to Ada that he would take her life upon any attempt of hers to escape, were perfectly insincere. To Ada and her existence he clung as to his only hope of mercy, if by some untoward circumstance he should be taken, as well as for his only means of being thoroughly and entirely revenged upon Learmont. Upon the whole, then, Jacob Gray, as he walked down Parliament-street, in the dim, uncertain light from the oil lamps of the period, and saw that Ada followed him slowly, rather congratulated himself upon his extreme cunning and the good position for working out all his darling projects, both of avarice and revenge, in which he was placed. “There is an old proverb,” he muttered, “which says, ‘the nearer to church, the further from Heaven,’ and I have read somewhere a fable of a hunted hare finding a secure, because an unsuspected, place of refuge in a dog-kennel. Upon that principal will I secrete myself for one short month in some place densely inhabited; where two persons make but an insignificant item in the great mass that surrounds them, will I seek security, and then my revenge—my deep revenge!” But few passengers were in Parliament-street; the quantity of persons, however, sensibly increased as they approached Whitehall, and from Charing-cross the lights were just glancing when Ada suddenly paused, and Gray, on the impulse of the moment, got two or three paces in advance of her. There were two persons conversing, about where Scotland-yard stands, and laughing carelessly, while several more people were rapidly approaching from Charing-cross. Gray was sensible in a moment that Ada had stopped, and he hurried immediately to see what were her intentions. As he did so, Ada broke the long silence she had maintained by suddenly exclaiming, in a voice that arrested every passenger, and made the blood retreat with a frightful gush to the heart of Jacob Gray.