Here, therefore, Miss Kingscott sat herself down to bide her time. Patience was never a virtue that she possessed, and it can be no wonder that time hung heavy on her hands, and her heart was gnawed through with vexation and impatience at the delay in all her plans, the failure of her vengeance. Nemesis was at fault, and Nemesis showed the traces of her mental struggles in her face: this last year had aged her more than ten. She paid repeated visits to the offices of Messrs. Trump, Sequence, and Co., in Bedford Row, all to no purpose. Mr Trump had first heard her placidly and promised assistance when she should have secured her prey; he had next, after being sufficiently bored, told her that it was no business of his, and washed his hands of it; he also said that if she took his advice she too would wash her hands of it, and leave it alone, to which Sequence, parrot-like, had re-echoed "leave it alone!" The lawyer finally, when he had been bored too much and had lost his admiration at the woman's fixity of purpose, gave directions in his office that he was to be "never in" when she called. Clara Kingscott after this waited long hours, sitting determinedly in the outer room, amid the ill-concealed ridicule and chaff of "sucking sheepskins," the clerks, and had finally to give up the lawyers in the chronic disgust which was now enveloping everything in her life. Solomonson and Isaacs, the Jew creditors of Markworth, she also haunted; but they, too, could not see what was to be done, and did not take that interest in Clara Kingscott's plans which she had supposed they would have done. To tell the truth the name of Markworth and all that was connected with their former client stunk in their nostrils; it was not a pleasant subject for them to dwell upon; so while their debtor was out of their reach,--although they were ready to pounce upon him _vi et armis_, with warrants and detainers, should he venture within the precincts of the lion's den, _id est_, be again within the realm--they preferred taking a dignified, albeit Hebrews, silence on the matter, and let it lie _perdu_ for the present. Ousted on all sides, therefore, and disappointed of her prey, Clara Kingscott's life during this interregnum of affairs was not a happy one, although she tried to make the best of it that she could. As she had plenty of money for her wants she was not obliged to seek employment, and she could afford to wait awhile and watch. But watching without occupation, and waiting with nothing to do, is poor work at the best for an impatient mind. In the meantime she cultivated relationship with the lodging-house keeper Mrs Martin, in the furtherance of her projects: "the parlours" and the basement were on the best of terms. The spring came and passed, the days spun out their weary length, summer was nigh, summer had come, and yet Clara Kingscott's vengeance was not matured; the fly kept away from the web which the spider had so cunningly woven for him.