"Why, if I could explain all this to them," he said to himself at last, "they'd think I was a harmless kind of madman, troubled with memories of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, which I was trying to drag into everyday life like a Barber's hundredth brother, or a one-eyed Calendar. Come, come, old fellow," he continued, as he mentally apostrophised himself; "go back home and prescribe for yourself, and then begin to show someone that you have been suffering from a strange mental vagary, brought about by over-excitement. She will believe it in time, and all may come right again. Ah! how like." He started and hurried after an open carriage in which two ladies were seated. He only saw the profile of one of them very slightly, and her back as she passed, but there was a turn of the figure--a particularly graceful air, as she leaned forward to give some instruction to the coachman--which struck him as being exactly similar to attitudes he had seen Marion assume again and again when attending upon her brother. He jumped into a cab and told the man to follow the victoria, with the result that the latter came to a standstill in front of one of the fashionable West-End drapery establishments. Chester was close up as the lady alighted, and he sprang out excitedly to go and speak to her. There was every opportunity, for the carriage drove on with her companion, and she crossed the pavement alone, to walk a few steps alone in front of the great plate-glass window, gazing carelessly in at the various costumes displayed. "A woman after all," he said to himself, bitterly annoyed at what he considered her frivolity in thinking of dress at a time when her brother was in all probability suffering still. "But it is their nature, or the result of their education," he said the next minute, as he went close up behind her, and saw her face reflected clearly in the long series of mirrors at the back. CHAPTER ELEVEN. MR ROACH LOWERS HIMSELF. "Bah!" ejaculated Chester in his rage and despair, as he swung round and hurried away. "Fool, idiot! No more like her than that miserable flower-seller is. Am I suffering from the shock of the drug they gave me? Well, if I am, she must be found all the same, for I cannot go on like this and live!" He hurried along, without heeding which way he went, and as if by instinct made for his own house, reached it, started as if in surprise, and then turned to enter, but altered his mind after a pause, and drew the door to, after which he walked swiftly away in the direction of Westminster. For the meeting had raised thoughts which he felt that he would only obliterate by plunging once more into the mazes of his wild search.