“Mersey Street, sir? Oh, yes; first to the right, second to the left, and then third to the right.” Frank Onslow nodded his thanks and hurried away, trying hard to retain the sequence of rights and lefts in his confused brain; while the policeman whom he had questioned stood looking after him and beating his gloves. “What does he want down Mersey Street? No accounting for these swells.” Onslow had not noticed the man’s manner, but he could not help hesitating for a moment as he reached the street named; and he hesitated again as he paused at the open door of No. 10--open, as he thought, like a trap. But the intense desire to test the value of the promised information bore down everything else; and, forgetting the aspect of the coarse-looking women and ruffianly men loafing about at public-house doors and the corners of the streets, he knocked sharply. “I will not go in,” he said to himself. “Ronny--Fenella--my life may be of value to them, if it is little to me.” A hard faced, showily dressed woman of about forty came to the door, looked him sharply up and down, and before he could speak exclaimed: “Oh, you’re the gent, are you?” “What do you mean? Yes, I am the gentleman who was to come here by appointment.” “Then you’re too late,” said the woman sourly. “She’s gone.” “She--has--gone?” faltered Onslow. “The appointment was at four o’clock. It is not ten minutes past.” “I can’t help that. She came back in a hurry in a cab, fetched her bag, and she’s gone.” “But the--the lady--is coming back?” “Not likely. If you came you was to be shown into the room she took. Want to wait?” “No,” said Onslow shortly, as a strange suspicion flashed through his brain, and he turned and hurried away. Had Lucille been saved, and was this some fresh scheme on her part, some fresh web spinning to entangle him and keep him and Fenella apart? He shivered slightly as he walked sharply away, feeling that he must by an accident have escaped from some new peril; and as he walked rapidly on through the crowded streets he saw nothing but the face of his fair young wife gazing at him reproachfully, but with a yearning look of forgiveness in her eyes. “Yes, there must be forgiveness now,” he muttered feverishly; “I do not deserve it, but for Ronny’s sake. And she is waiting for me--waiting till I go to her and on my knees beg her to come, and she will come, for the sake of our darling boy.” He was hurrying on with the busy tide of life eddying by his side, but his eyes had once more assumed their fixed, hypnotic look as he gazed straight before him, seeing the chamber in which his child lay dying, as it seemed, his little head tossing from side to side, while his monotonous, ceaseless cry was for his mother. He had room but for one thought now, and that was to fetch Fenella to her boy’s bedside; and as the mental vision faded, and his countenance resumed its wonted aspect, the influence remained.