"Pardon me, but there is. Pardon me, but this is not the way you would have treated Mr. Darcy had he been in my place." Harriet gasped for breath. Mr. Darcy, the hero of her Brighton folly, the name which she had never confessed to a living soul, the only man in the world who she thought could have taunted her with indiscretion, and of being weak and frivolous rather than a rude and forward girl! Harriet did not reply; she looked at him closely, almost tremblingly, and then continued her hurried progress homewards; the prowler, seeing his advantage, maintained his position by her side, keeping the umbrella over her. "Mr. Darcy was an intimate friend of mine before he went to India; we were together at Brighton, Miss Wesden--more than once he has mentioned your name to me." "Indeed," she murmured. "You would like to hear that he is well, perhaps." "I am glad to hear that," Miss Wesden ventured to remark. "He is in India still--I believe will remain there, marry and settle down there for good." "Have you been watching my house to tell me this?" "Partly, and partly for other reasons, for which I have a better excuse. I have been a wanderer--in search of happiness many years, and for the first time in a life not unadventurous there crosses my----" "Good evening, sir--I have been entrapped into a conversation--I must beg you to leave me." Harriet set off at the double again--in double quick time went the prowler after her. People abroad that night began to notice the agitated girl, and the tall man marching on at her side, who, in his eagerness to keep step, trod on people's feet, and sent one doctor's boy, basket and bottles, crunching against a lamp-post; one or two stopped and looked after them and then continued their way--it was a race between the prowler and his victim, the prowler making a dead heat of it. Harriet gave in at last--her spirit was not a very strong one, and she stopped and burst into tears. "Sir, will you leave me?--will you believe that I don't want to hear a single word of your reasons for thus persecuting me?" "Miss Wesden, only allow me to explain, and I will go my way and never see you more. I will vanish away in the darkness, and let all the bright hopes I have fostered float away on the current which bears you away from me." "Go, pray do go, if you are a gentleman. I must appeal to some one for protection, if you----" "Miss Wesden, you must hear me--you shall hear me. I am not a child; I am----" "A scoundrel, evidently," said a harsh voice in his ears, and the instant afterwards Sidney Hinchford, with two fiery eyes behind his spectacles, stood between him and the girl he was persecuting. Harriet, with a little cry of joy, clung to the arm of her deliverer; the prowler looked perplexed, then put the best face upon the matter that he could extemporize for the occasion. "Who are you, sir?" was the truly English expletive.