your friend Mrs Sadleir, whose husband was then in the Government, at a ball at Trentham House--since to me its historical associations were even more attractive than the great modern dockyards elsewhere which had supplanted it. In that train we ventured at last to meet and speak, to discuss our future. You will ask, perhaps, why I had not made straight for Hamburg and America. There were two reasons. First, if the trick with regard to the special train should be discovered, that would be the route on which we should be looked for; and again, I was anxious to make assurance doubly sure by being married a second time. The ceremony in the laboratory, such as it was, though absolutely irregular, was so far valid that nothing short of an appeal to Rome could dissolve the marriage; but we had nothing to show for it, and if all the witnesses conspired to deny it, we were powerless. Moreover, Konstantia was a Protestant, and I, of course, had been brought up a Catholic. My idea was to throw ourselves upon the mercy of some English clergyman, explaining to him as much of our story as was necessary, no more, and ask his advice. At Bradcross, I thought, I could find quiet lodgings, where we might lie _perdus_ while the hunt for us went on, for the three weeks’ residence which I understood was required by the English law before a marriage could be solemnised. We had to find a clergyman, a lodging, everything, and all without exciting suspicion. Fortunately, I spoke English as travelled princes are wont to do, fluently and without accent, and Konstantia with readiness, while the maid, Julie Schlesinger, her foster-sister, had picked up enough of it to find her way about. But we were a very forlorn trio as we descended the narrow flight of filthy steps that led down into the street from the Bradcross railroad platform, the girls carrying their satchels, and I the cloaks of the party.” Mr Steinherz paused, and the slow smile crept over his face once more as he thought of that first day of freedom. From far below came the dull roll of traffic in the side-streets, with an occasional sharp scraping sound as a horse stumbled on the granite roadway, while in the square itself the approach of a hansom smote upon the ear like a dropping fire, becoming more and more insistent, only to be lost again suddenly in the general rumble. Maimie was listening with the intensest interest for what was to come. She knew that her mother’s maiden name had been Julia Slazenger, and she felt she was on the eve of further discoveries. CHAPTER III. THE BURDEN OF A SECRET. Presently Mr Steinherz went on with his story, and Usk noticed a subtle change in his manner of speech. Hitherto, he had spoken “fluently and without accent,” as he had said himself, but with a certain precision of phrase that betrayed the man to whom English was not his native tongue; now he became by degrees the American once more.