His haste was checked, however, by an immediate collision with a young woman who, coming in the opposite direction, turned the angle as briskly as themselves. At this moment the Captain gave Hyacinth a great jerk, but not before he had caught a glimpse of the young woman’s face—it seemed to flash upon him out of the dusk—and given quick voice to his surprise. “Hallo, Millicent!” This was the simple cry that escaped from his lips, while the Captain, still going on, inquired, “What’s the matter? Who’s your pretty friend?” Hyacinth declined to go on, and repeated Miss Henning’s baptismal name so loudly that the young woman, who had passed them without looking back, was obliged to stop. Then Hyacinth saw that he was not mistaken, though Millicent gave no audible response. She stood looking at him, with her head very high, and he approached her, disengaging himself from Sholto, who however hung back only an instant before joining them. Hyacinth’s heart had suddenly begun to beat very fast; there was a sharp shock in the girl’s turning up just in that place at that moment. Yet when she began to laugh, abruptly, with violence, and to ask him why he was looking at her as if she were a kicking horse, he recognised that there was nothing so very extraordinary, after all, in a casual meeting between persons who were such frequenters of the London streets. Millicent had never concealed the fact that she ‘trotted about’, on various errands, at night; and once, when he had said to her that the less a respectable young woman took the evening air alone the better for her respectability, she had asked how respectable he thought she pretended to be, and had remarked that if he would make her a present of a brougham, or even call for her three or four times a week in a cab, she would doubtless preserve more of her social purity. She could turn the tables quickly enough, and she exclaimed, now, professing, on her own side, great astonishment— “What are you prowling about here for? You’re after no good, I’ll be bound!” “Good evening, Miss Henning; what a jolly meeting!” said the Captain, removing his hat with a humorous flourish. “Oh, how d’ye do?” Millicent returned, as if she did not immediately place him. “Where were you going so fast? What are you doing?” asked Hyacinth, who had looked from one to the other. “Well, I never did see such a manner—from one that knocks about like _you!_” cried Miss Henning. “I’m going to see a friend of mine—a lady’s-maid in Curzon Street. Have you anything to say to that?” “Don’t tell us—don’t tell us!” Sholto interposed, after she had spoken (she had not hesitated an instant). “I, at least, disavow the indiscretion. Where may not a charming woman be going when she trips with a light foot through the gathering dusk?” “I say, what are you talking about?” the girl inquired, with dignity, of Hyacinth’s companion. She spoke as if with a resentful suspicion that her foot had not really been perceived to be light.