pace, the man moves, his female companion always keeps at the one exact distance behind him--about three yards or so--See, just as they stand now at No. 46! I never perceive her approach nearer. She seems a most assiduous wife." "_Wife!_" rejoined Sainsbury, with a motion of the lip that might have been a smile, but for the gravity of his other features--"she is not his wife." "Wife, or friend then," I said, correcting myself. "She is not his friend either." "Well, his sister or relative." "Neither sister nor relative--in fact," he said, "I don't think she is any thing to him." "But the deuce is in it, man, you don't mean to say that she is not a most devoted friend who thus so closely, and at all hours, it appears to me, attends him and assists"---- "She does not assist him," again interrupted Sainsbury. "I mean, shares his toil." "She has no participation whatever in his business. Come," he said, rising and advancing to the window, "I see you are puzzled; nor are you the first who has been at fault respecting that extraordinary Pair. Just observe them for a moment," and he threw up the sash to afford me the means of glancing after them along the street; "you perceive that there is not the slightest communication between them. He has just stopped at that house, No. 50, and there stands the woman, rigid as a statue, only three yards behind him; now he has done and moves rapidly on--how exactly she follows! He stops again, and see, she is motionless; now, he proceeds slowly across the street to that house with the lofty portico, but, slowly or quickly, there she is close at hand." "How very odd!" I said; "they never speak." "Speak! Watch him narrowly, and you will see he never for a single instant _looks behind him_. Here they come this way, on his return homewards. You hear the shout from those idle throngs that have just caught a glimpse of yonder balloon; you see _that_ man never turns, never pauses, never looks up; he knows who is behind him, and hurries on. There, he has turned the corner, and, certain as his death, _she_ has vanished in his footsteps. Singular--most singular!" he muttered to himself half musingly. "But surely their home reconciles them?" "They don't live together! On the contrary, I believe, they dwell far asunder; and we of this neighbourhood, who have seen them for years, have just as little cause to conclude that they are known personally to each other as you have, who have only beheld them once or twice." "But this strange companionship, this existence of attraction and repulsion, which I have witnessed those two days, it surely does not always continue. You talk of years"---- "Yes, several years; and during that time the man has not been once missed from his business, nor ever found pursuing it unwatched or unattended by that woman, more constant, in truth, than his very shadow."