… Then had begun their strange pilgrimage through the London streets, the long, long night. She went beside him, through the tangle of unknown, unlit ways; seeing him only ever and anon, painted as it were against the darkness by the glare of the smoky street fires in the more open spaces. In his white hand, the sword drawn, guarding her from the prowling thieves of the night. Inhuman wretches, to whom the stricken city’s extremity was fortune’s boon, slinking after them like pariah dogs…! They had spoken little: mostly words of bare need. But once he had told her she was brave; and once that she was strong indeed.… She had at one moment noticed a great pity in his eyes.—Ah, he need never have pitied her; she had been happy, being with him. * * * * * She started from her heavy revery: some one was knocking at the casement. Outside the window the lines of a man’s head and shoulders, a man hatless, with disordered periwig, were silhouetted blackly against the morning light. She sprang to her feet, terror stifling the scream in her throat. She remembered the marauders that had slunk after them in the night, more to be dreaded these desperate days than pestilence itself. But it was her own name that met her ear, urgently cried:— “Diana, open!—’Tis I, Lionel.” Before the words had penetrated to sense, she had recognised the voice. Upon the impulse of her relief, she hastened to the window and flung the casement apart. “Cousin Lionel…!” But this was a Cousin Lionel she had never before known. About his livid face the dank curls hung in wild dishevelment—he, whose person had ever seemed as sedately ordered as his mind. He motioned her from him so fiercely that she fell back in fresh alarm. “Aye, Diana,” said he, answering her look, “you may well be afraid—’tis like enough I have it! And were it not that I am here to save you from worse than plague, for the sheer love I bear you, there should be leagues between us—Stand where you are, Diana! Come not a step nearer!” He drew himself with effort up to the window-sill, from some ledge whereon he had climbed; then, seated, he looked in upon her again; and to his pallid countenance came a ghostly semblance of the old sarcastic smile:— “Never enquire how I tracked you. I knew that the Rakehell, who chivalrously took you from the charge of your own kin—to rescue you from the plague, forsooth!—would find no shelter for you but that of his own honourable habitation!” “Lionel…!” Sudden anger drove all fear from her. He went on:—