"I can go back at any time," observed Blase. "Old Float would be only too glad to have me. The young fellow he has now in my place is not _me_, Float writes word. Float will have to attend to business a little more himself now, and I expect it will not suit him." Vouchsafing no answer to this, Frank left the order he had gone in to give, and passed out of the shop, his mind in a very disagreeable state of ferment. "He has come up here to spy upon me; he is watching my movements," said Frank to himself. "How did he know I was here--in this part of London?--how did he find it out?" A positive conviction, that it was utterly useless to try to evade Blase Pellet, had taken sudden possession of him; that he had been tracking him all along by the means of spies and emissaries, and had now come to do it in person. He felt that if he were to sail away over the seas and set up his tent in an African desert, or on the shores of some remote fastness of the Indian Empire, or amidst the unexplored wilds of a prairie, he should see Blase Pellet in another tent, side by side with him, the next morning. For the moment, his several pressing engagements had gone out of his head. His patients, lying in expectation of him, might lie: self was all in all. The uneasiness that had taken hold of him amounted to tribulation. "I wonder what Dame Bell knows of this?" it suddenly occurred to him to think. And no sooner did it occur than, acting on the moment's impulse, he determined to ask her, and walked towards her lodging at his usual quick rate. She had taken rooms in a quiet street, West Street, where the small houses were chiefly private. It was nearly a week since Frank had seen her, for her complaint was very fluctuating, and latterly she had felt better, not requiring regular attendance. Opening the front-door without knocking, as was his custom, he went upstairs to the small sitting-room: this room and the bedchamber behind it comprising Mrs. Bell's apartments. She had come into a little money by the death of her sister at Falmouth, John Pellet's wife: and this, combined with her previous small income, enabled her to live quietly. When Mrs. Pellet died, it had been suggested that Rosaline should take to her millinery business, and carry it on: but Rosaline positively declined to do so. Neither Rosaline nor her mother liked Falmouth, and they resolved to go up to London. Chance alone--or at least, that apparently unconscious impulse that is called chance--had caused them to choose this particular part of London for their abode; and neither of them had the slightest idea that it was within a stone's-throw of Frank Raynor. On the third day after settling in it, Rosaline and Frank had met in Mark Street: and he then learnt the news of their recent movements.