"Will you? Well, I always say what I think, and I say that's liberal. Now look here! Very likely I shan't see you again; perhaps I shall have to step it with her, in order to be sure she's safe off, and not dodging, or likely to walk back again. So when you find she's really gone, just you send a cheque for the fifty, made payable to bearer, mind, and not crossed, to this address;" and bending down over the table he took a pen and scrap of paper and wrote: Mr. Effingham, Mr. Johnson's, The Brown Bear, Shakespeare Street, Strand, London. "Will you do that?" "I will." "Having said so as an honourable gent, I know you'll keep your word. Now how am I to see her?" "She walks out every day at three o'clock with her pupil--" "Her pupil! Lizzie Ponsford's pupil! My eye!" "With her pupil," repeated Sir Charles sternly, "in the chestnut avenue leading from the lodge-gate. A tall woman with very large eyes, and crisp wavy °hair over her forehead; a peculiar-looking woman--you couldn't mistake her." "All right! As I go out of the lodge-gate now, I'll just say a few words to the old lady that keeps it, that she may know me again--don't you see?--and not be surprised at my coming in and out. And now, as I shall probably have to hang about here for two or three days, where can I put up?" "You mustn't remain here in the house--" "Lor' bless you, that would never do! isn't there a public near?" "There is the Mitford Arms, within a quarter of a mile of the lodge." "I saw it; the carrier's-cart which brought me over from Torquay stopped there. That'll do. I'll be a littery gent gettin' up information about the old county families, or an artist sketchin'--that'll do. Now give me a week clear: if nothing's done by then, you'll have spent ten pound very badly, and I shall have lost my time. But if within that time--and it might be to-morrow or any day--you find she's clean gone, you've got the address, and you'll send the cheque to it?" "You may rely on me." "I do thoroughly. Now how am I to get out? It wouldn't do for you to be seen with me--my togs, though just the sort of thing for the littery gent, ain't very swell." "You can go down this staircase," said Sir Charles, leading him to a landing; "it guides on to the garden, take the first to the right, and you'll come at last to the avenue." Mr. Effingham put his finger to the limp brim of his hat and departed. But when he arrived in the chestnut avenue, and had looked carefully round, and found that he was out of sight of any one in the house, and that there was no one near enough to observe his conduct, he rubbed his hands together, and almost cut a caper in the air with delight.