By the time Mr. Levi had got the keys together, and all safe in Mortlake, the sun had set, and in the red twilight that followed he set off in his cab towards town. At the "Guy of Warwick"--from the bar of which already was flaring a good broad gas-light--he stopped and got out. There was a full view of the bar from where he stood; and, pretending to rummage his pockets for something, he was looking in to see whether "the coast was clear." "She's just your sort--not too bad and not too good--not too nashty, and not too nishe; a good-humoured lash, rough and ready, and knowsh a thing or two." "Ye're there, are ye?" inquired Mr. Levi, playfully, as he crossed the door-stone, and placed his fists on the bar grinning. "What will you take, Sir, please?" inquired the young woman, at one side of whom was the usual row of taps and pump-handles. "Now, Miss Phœbe, give me a brandy and shoda, pleashe. When I talked to you in thish 'ere place 'tother night, you wished to engage for a lady's maid. What would you shay to me, if I was to get you a firsht-chop tip-top pla-ashe of the kind? Well, don't you shay a word--that brandy ain't fair measure--and I'll tell you. It'sh a la-ady of ra-ank! where wagesh ish no-o object; and two years' savings, and a good match with a well-to-do 'andsome young fellow, will set you hup in a better place than this 'ere." "It comes very timely, Sir, for I'm to leave to-morrow, and I was thinking of going home to my uncle in a day or two, in Chester." "Well it's all settled. Come you down to my offishe, you know where it is, to-morrow, at three, and I'll 'av all partickulars for you, and a note to the lady from her brother, the baronet; and if you be a good girl, and do as you're bid, you'll make a little fortune of it." She curtsied, with her eyes very round, as he, with a wag of his head drank down what remained of his brandy and soda, and wiping his mouth with his glove, he said, "Three o'clock sha-arp, mind; good-bye, Phœbe, lass, and don't you forget all I said." He stood ungallantly with his back towards her on the threshold lighting a cigar, and so soon as he had it in his own phrase, "working at high blast," he got into his cab, and jingled towards his office, with all his keys about him. While Miss Arden remained all unconscious, and even a little amused at the strange shifts to which her brief stay and extemporised household at Mortlake exposed her, a wily and determined strategist was drawing his toils around her. The process of isolation was nearly completed, without having once excited her suspicions; and, with the same perfidious skill, the house itself was virtually undergoing those modifications which best suited his designs. Sir Richard appeared at his club as usual. He was compelled to do so. The all-seeing eye of his pale tyrant pursued him everywhere; he lived under terror. A dreadful agony all this time convulsed the man, within whose heart Longcluse suspected nothing but the serenity of death.