‘Mrs. Bertram, sir? O dear, no; she left us three days ago, and the apartments are to let. Missus doesn’t put up any bill, because she says it gives such a low look; but there’s a card at the grocer’s.’ ‘Mrs. Bertram has moved!’ said Geoffrey, his heart beating very fast. ‘Where has she gone?’ It might be to the next street only. She had found the rooms small perhaps, as her pupils increased. Yet even a few minutes’ delay dashed his high hopes. It seemed hard to meet any kind of hindrance at the outset. ‘She didn’t leave no address,’ answered the girl; ‘she’s left Stillmington for some time. She said the air was relackshing at this time of year, and the little girl didn’t seem quite well. So she went. She means to come back in the winter, she told us, and go on with her pupils; but she was going somewheres by the sea.’ ‘But surely she must have left some address with your mistress, in order that letters might be forwarded to her?’ ‘No, she didn’t, sir. I heared missus ast her that very question about the letters, and she says to missus that it didn’t matter—there wouldn’t be no letters for her, not of no consequence, as she would write and tell her friends her new address. She didn’t exactly know where she was going, she says.’ ‘When did she leave?’ asked Geoffrey in despair. How could the Fates treat him so hardly? ‘Three days ago—last Wednesday.’ The very day of his journey down to Hampshire. She had lost no time in taking flight. She had gone almost immediately after he left Stillmington. Could he doubt that her motive had been to avoid him—to flee temptation? For did he not know that she loved him? ‘Mrs. Bertram left very suddenly, did she not?’ he asked of the maid-of-all-work, who was breathing hard with impatience to be gone, knowing that her mistress awaited her in the washhouse, and would assuredly lecture her for gossiping. ‘Yes, sir, it was quite suddent. She gave missus a week’s rent instead of the reglar notice.’ ‘And you have really no idea where she went when she left you?’ ‘No, sir. She went away by the London train. That’s all I can tell you.’ ‘Thanks,’ said Geoffrey with a sigh. He rewarded the girl with a half-crown, almost mechanically, and departed heartsore. How could she be so cruel as to hide herself from him—to put a new barrier between them! Was she afraid of his importunity—afraid that she would lack strength to resist his pleading? By the sea! She had gone to the sea-side. That was information of the vaguest character. ‘If I have to scour the English coast, I will find her,’ he said to himself desperately. But it was just possible she might leave England—that she might hide herself in some obscure village in Normandy or Brittany, where the cockney-tourist had not yet penetrated. The field was wide, to say the least of it.