But her gratification came at last in reward for her patience. One night--it was far now advanced in the summer--as she was perspiring in the dingy parlours which she would not relinquish even in the hot weather, notwithstanding that she had nothing to keep her in town, she heard a double knock at the street door. The knock was nothing unusual in itself. It was a knock which perhaps any gentleman or lady might have given--but there was this point about it, it was undecided. Miss Kingscott had been previously reviewing in her mind all the chain of events that had interwoven her life and her purpose with that of Markworth. She had been tracing down the panorama of the last year from its inception to the part where the canvas had been roughly torn across. There was nothing unusual in this, it was her constant practice to do this nearly every night--to evolve the various thoughts which had been passing through her mind during the day, as they did every day. But by one of those sudden mental clutches which strike across our brain sometimes, she seized upon the past and worked it into the present. Like as a sudden noise which we hear in our sleep--such as the report of a gun, or the sudden exclamation of someone who intrudes on our slumbers--is worked into our dreams and forms the subject of a complete mental phantasmagoria, so this stray knock at the street door of Mrs Martin's lodgings was worked by Clara Kingscott into her present thoughts. "He's here!" she exclaimed to herself in the tumultuous throbbing of her excited imagination. "He's here! I feel it! I have waited long, but he is caught at last!" But she did not go to the door, she waited and watched still: in spite of all, however, she was right for once. It was Markworth. By and bye, later in the evening, Mrs Martin came up to tell her the important news. Her former lodger had returned--so poor--so ill-dressed--so changed from what she had formerly remembered him. What did he want? Had she sent him about his business? Not she! The worldly lodging-house keeper had still a heart left; and the poor wanderer who had returned had been one of her best tenants. He was worn out, poor fellow--she said--and she had put him in one of her best bedrooms, where she hoped he was sleeping comfortably after all the troubles he had gone through. "It made her heart bleed to hear 'im," said the twenty-five-shillings-a-week-and-coals-extra vampire. There is charity in all of us, friend, if you can find it out; even in a London lodging-house keeper; and some of us, returning prodigals, can quote with the poet, that they found their warmest welcome at an inn. Strangers are sometimes even more compassionate than friends! "At last! At last!" murmured Miss Kingscott; and she had planned well before what she should do in such an emergency.