he gave his friend a great jerk, but not before Hyacinth 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. “Hullo, Millicent!” This was the simple cry that escaped from his lips while the Captain, still going on, but threw off, “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 he saw 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, and with violence, and to ask him why he should look 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: “Whatever 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 not at once placing 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—and she had not, however slightly, hesitated. “I at least disavow the indiscretion. Where may not a charming woman be going when she trips with a light foot through the deepening dusk?” “I say, what are you talking about?” the girl demanded with dignity of Hyacinth’s companion. She spoke as if with a resentful suspicion that her foot had not really been felt to be light. “On what errand of mercy, on what secret ministration?” the Captain laughed. “Secret yourself!” cried Millicent. “Do you two always hunt in couples?”