"Now to decide," thought I, fixing my eyes on the man once more. "It must end in a guess after all." This glance took in the man's whole person as well as his face. The latter appeared to be of wonderful muscular strength; but his bones were well covered with fat, which methought did not look much as though he had been leading the vagabond life of a house-breaker. His clothes were good, and seemed to have been fairly worn. From his person I once more raised my eyes to his face. The cunning fearful expression of those wild black orbs decided me--he is a madman, and about to strangle me: and my only chance is in affecting to be one of his keepers. "Follow me, Sir!" said I, fiercely. The man followed slowly and meekly into the drawing-room, where he stationed himself near the fire-place with an air of indecision, nor once attempted to approach me. "The gentlemen who are here to attend on you will be downstairs in half a second," said I, seating myself quietly near him, and taking up a book, as if, God help me, I could distinguish a line of it. Then I addressed him in a whisper, "They are coming; you have perhaps yet time if you wish to escape them; the street-door is unbarred; but you have not a second to lose; they are going to put on the chain." The man, without having uttered a single word, darted furiously downstairs and, when I heard the street door slammed with violence after him, joy, or I know not what, overcame me, and I fainted. This adventure hastened my departure for Brighton, where I arrived a day sooner than the one on which I had led Lord Worcester to expect me. Worlds could not have tempted either me, or my _femme de chambre_, to have passed another night alone in that house. Lord Worcester was overjoyed beyond description at my unexpected return. He would not enter into my idea as to the man who had frightened me away from London being mad. "Why then, was he so awfully dumb?" I asked, "and why did he not approach me?" Worcester declared if he could once find him he would make him speak, and holloa too; but this, from the muscular strength of the stranger, I much doubted. However there was little probability of his lordship's discovering who or what the man was; and in a few days the subject was not spoken of, though for years I remembered it with feelings of horror. CHAPTER XXI The next day, as we were riding together over the Downs, I saw a deserter taken; and was so affected with the poor wretch's look of distress as to have burst into tears; at which Worcester and Fitzgerald laughed heartily. This however did not prevent my writing a laboured letter, which had cost me three copies, to try to melt Colonel Quintin's heart in his favour. I could not help fancying, as the man was led past us handcuffed, that the expression of his countenance might be interpreted thus, when he fixed his eyes on my face: