Evening had fallen now, and the gas-lamps were reflected in the murky and muddy waters of the Binnenhafen, as she stepped ashore, and entered a close droski (as those cabs are named which ply for hire in all the principal thoroughfares of Hamburg) unnoticed by any but some dock porters, and an organ-grinder with a monkey 'appropriately dressed in Highland costume,' as Sleath remarked while putting his head out of the window, and telling Gaiters, who was seated beside the driver, where they were to go. The vehicle proceeded slowly, and Ellinor, while in a fever of impatience, and without hearing what Sir Redmond was saying to her, looked forth from the windows alternately, and recognised the church of St. Nicolai as they passed through the Hopfen Market, the street called the Gras Keller, and the long and stately Neuerwall, after which they seemed to traverse streets that were unknown to her, old, mean, and dirty. 'Need I urge upon you how strangely our paths seem to cross each other--how strangely our lives seemed linked together, Ellinor?' said he, attempting to take one of her hands caressingly. This roused her, and she withdrew it sharply. 'Still perverse!' he resumed, with knitted brows. 'Fate has thrown us together for a third time. You escaped me twice; but the third time mine you shall be, so sure as you hear me speak!' She made not the slightest response, and surveyed with surprise the network of canals and wet ditches the droski crossed by a succession of iron bridges. 'Ellinor,' said Sir Redmond again, 'you are over-excited; you have not recovered from the terror of your accident--the sickness and storm at the river mouth.' Her face was pale and rigid; her eyes alternately flashing fire at the prospect of freedom, and then growing cold as steel with indignation. To her it began to seem impossible that Mrs. Deroubigne and Mary could have left their pretty and airy villa at Altona, on the grassy bank of the Elbe, to dwell in such a locality as that in which she found herself when the droski stopped. 'Here we are, sir,' said Gaiters, jumping down and touching his cockaded hat. A bell that emitted a dismal sound resounded to the downward pull of the iron handle, and a large door--but all the doorways are large in Hamburg--unfolded, showing a gloomy porch, lighted only by the oil-lamp that burned feebly before a madonna perched on the wall to give the house an external air of respectability. After a conference with some one within, Gaiters reappeared at the droski window. 'Madame Wyburg,' he said, 'tells me that Mrs. Deroubigne has left this place two days ago, and gone, she believes, to Brussels.' 'To Brussels!' exclaimed Ellinor, sick with disappointment and dismay, as she sank back on her seat. 'I cannot go there vaguely in search of them----' 'Of course not; so what then?' 'Oh, let me get back to London--to Grosvenor Square!'