"Perhaps even," I said in a foolish and feeble spirit of attempted irony, "perhaps even you like me." "Perhaps even," she echoed, "I like you." "Kate," I cried, all the blood in my veins running riot, "it is not possible--for God's sake don't play with me--but it is not possible--tell me--it is not possible, it can't be--that--that--you care." In a moment she was alive again. Her eyes, all her soul in them, left the far-off skies, and leapt to meet mine. "I care," she said, softly. The next instant, and before I could stay her, she was gone. * * * * * It is fortunate I did not see Miss Clara as I left the house. Had I met that dear creature on my way out, I should, to a dead certainty, not only have kissed her on the spot, but with never a thought for horrified servants or scandalised neighbours, should have put my arm around her capacious waist, and then and there have compelled her to dance a Highland fling with me. That Metcalfe thought I had been drinking (as I had--deep draughts of the most intoxicating of all elixirs, the elixir of love), I am positive. Detecting me in the act of tweaking the nose of the stone bust of a celebrated Nonconformist divine, which stood in a recess at the bottom of the stairs, and of painstakingly (mere absence of mind that!) wiping my boots on the doormat, as if I were about to enter a drawing-room instead of passing out into a muddy street, he inquired solicitously whether I wouldn't like a cab, remarking with a surreptitious glance at the boots with which I had been performing such unnecessary antics on the doormat: "Yes, sir; the streets _is_ very muddy, but you'll get home nice and dry and comfortable in a keb." Telling him that I was tired out and half asleep from my long watch overnight, and that to walk home would be the surest way to awaken and freshen me, I slipped a sovereign into his palm, and made my way into the streets, all the blood in my body dancing in my veins, all the joy of first love singing in my brain. At my rooms I found the expected notice requiring me to attend and to give evidence at the inquest to be held that day at noon upon the bodies of the three men who had been found drowned in the Thames. That the inquiry was not wanting in painful interest the reader will readily surmise, but except to say that I was subjected to a severe and suspicious examination, I do not propose further to enter upon the details of the inquest here.