He then rose, and paced the room for some time with hasty and unequal steps. Suddenly pausing, he trembled again with the same awful intensity that he had done before, and in a hoarse, husky whisper, said,— “What if she come not back? She suspects me. It is time she were here again. Oh! If she should seek protection elsewhere! More danger!—More danger!—Into what a tangled web of horrors am I placed! Can I fly? What money have I? A large sum, but yet not enough. Oh! If Learmont would give me at once a sum of money which would suffice me in a foreign land, and trust my word to go, and if I could trust him to let me live to go. Ah! There it is!—There it is! We cannot trust each other—not for a moment—no, not for a moment.” Jacob Gray muttered these gloomy meditations in a low, anxious tone, and almost at every word he paused to endeavour to detect some token of the return of Ada. None, however, met his ears, and, after two hours of mental agony of mind had thus passed over the head of Jacob Gray, he crept down the staircase, and stood at the door looking anxiously about him by the dim morning light that was beginning, with its cold grey tints, to struggle through the darkness of the sky. “She does not come,” he muttered—“she does not come. What shall I do—whither seek her? Yet—I—I must endeavour to find her.” He now turned his attention to the broken lock of the door, and after some time, succeeded in closing it after him tolerably securely, then searching in the road till he found a piece of chalk, he wrote on the door,— “Wait—J.G.” “Should she return during my absence,” he thought, “she will recognise my writing and initials to wait my return. She is most probably near at hand, waiting for me to search for her.” Casting again a cautious, scrutinising glance around him, Jacob Gray walked slowly down the ruined street, peering into each doorway as he went, with the hope of seeing Ada. His search was unsuccessful. He could see no trace of Ada; and a thousand feelings of alarm and suspicion began to crowd upon his mind. He paused irresolutely at the end of the street, uncertain which way he should shape his course. At last, with a sudden resolution, he walked in the direction of Westminster Bridge. As he neared Lambeth, he observed that the watermen, who plied at the different stairs by the side of the river, seemed particularly engrossed by some subject of importance, for they were congregated together in knots of two, three, and four, discoursing earnestly and vehemently. He approached one, and touching his arm, said,— “What is the matter, friend?” “Murder’s the matter,” replied the man. “Murder!” “Ay, murder. There has been a murder done in the Bishop’s Walk.” “In the Bishop’s Walk?” “Yes; the body was found cold and stiff—the body of a waterman; but we will have justice.” “What was his name?” said Gray. “Sheldon. He plied at the bridge stairs opposite.”