“This morning, only this morning! But of course you can tell me where she has gone? I am her first-cousin, her only surviving relative. If I had known that there was the least chance of her leaving London, I should have tried to find her last night. Will you be good enough to direct me to her?” The woman shook her head. “I don’t know where Miss Turner has gone,” she said. Francis Tredethlyn’s face whitened to the very lips. “My God!” he exclaimed, “is there a fatality in this business? am I never to find her?” Then addressing himself to the woman with sudden earnestness, he said,-- “For pity’s sake, if you can help me in my difficulty, do so with all your might. You do not know how much depends on my finding her. I scarcely think I should say too much, if I were to tell you that it is a matter of life and death; for I saw my cousin’s face the night before last, and it looked to me like a face that is fading away from this earth. You have been told, perhaps, to give no one her address; but she did not think her cousin Francis would come to ask for it. Pray trust me and believe in me; I am the only friend that poor girl has in all this world.” “I have told you the truth, sir,” answered the woman, quietly; “I do not know where Miss Turner has gone. Anything I can tell you about her, I shall be happy to tell,” she added, as if answering the look of blank despair in Francis Tredethlyn’s face; “but it is very little. Will you step upstairs to my room? It is only a humble place, but it will be quieter there than here.” This could scarcely fail to be true; for during the very brief interview which had just taken place, Francis had been brushed against and flouted some half-dozen times by young persons with jugs and door-keys, going to and from a neighbouring public-house. It was the popular dinner-hour in Drury Lane, and four separate floors, with their minor divisions of backs and fronts, were more or less engaged in the business of dining.