I had seen him several times within the last few days, hanging around the corners near my apartments, as though watching for someone. Once on coming down my steps, I ran full into his arms as he stood on the landing, and as I disengaged myself, he glanced keenly into my face as though to fix it in his mind, and with a word of apology passed on. It seemed as though he followed my footsteps, for half an hour later, on passing a fruit stand near the Thames, I had seen him gazing intently at me through the lattice. And now the same man was just behind me, and when I glanced at him, innocently enough, he shrank back as though to avoid my look. Could it be that he dogged my steps, and for some purpose of his own wished to keep me in sight? I knew not why he should do so. I had no enemy in the city, who would go to so much trouble on my account. But it was worth looking into, and so I turned into an alley, and stepping quickly into a dark doorway, I waited. A few moments, and footsteps sounded on the pavement, and the figure of my pursuer, for pursuer he undoubtedly was, came in sight. Pausing at the entrance of the lane, he looked cautiously into it, no doubt pondering where I could have disappeared so suddenly. The moonlight shone full in his face as he stood there, and from my hiding place I could see every sinister feature, as like a baffled hound he sought to rediscover the lost scent. An instant thus he stood, as if undecided; then silently he stole into the dark alley, and passing the doorway where I stood melted away in the gloom. Waiting a few minutes where I was, I stepped down, and turning strode out of the lane and back to the corner whence I had come only a moment ago. Congratulating myself on the fact that I had shaken this spy, I resumed my walk. Through strange twisted streets, overhung with gabled, many-windowed houses; by dark shops, now closed for the day; and along ill-paved crooked lanes I strode, engaged with my own thoughts, as black and gloomy as my surroundings. What was I to do? Turn my back upon London and all my friends, and one bright lady, more than all the rest to me? I could not remain among those where once I held high sway, the chief amidst the gay throng--now poor, despised, forsaken, stripped of my rank and means, for I had been dependent upon the old lord, my father, for all that I had. Monthly he had sent to me through a London bank, a good round sum in shining gold, which I had promptly sown to the four winds.