Enclosing the packet in a stout envelope, which he directed, he went out, and dropped it into the post-office at the opposite corner of Crosse Street. Very soon he was on his way to Lady Godolphin's Folly, bearing with him the small parcel sent by Mrs. Verrall--a sufficient excuse for calling there, had George required an excuse. Which he did not. It was a light night; as it had been the previous night, though the moon was not yet very high. He gained the turnstile at the end of the Ash-tree Walk--where he had been startled by the apparition of Thomas, and where Isaac Hastings had seen Charlotte Pain that morning--and turned into the open way to the right. A few paces more, and he struck into the narrow pathway which would lead him through the grove of trees, leaving Ashlydyat and its approaches to the left. Did George Godolphin love the darkness, that he should choose that way? Last night and again to-night he had preferred it. It was most unusual for any one to approach the Folly by that obscure path. A few paces round, and he would have skirted the thicket, would have gone on to the Folly in the bright, open moonlight. Possibly George scarcely noticed that he chose it: full of thought, was he, just then. He went along with his head down. What were his reflections? Was he wishing that he could undo the deeds of the last hour--replace in that tin case what he had taken from it? Was he wishing that he could undo the deeds of the last few _years_--be again a man without a cloud on his brow, a heavier cloud on his heart? It was too late: he could recall neither the one nor the other. The deed was already on its way to London; the years had rolled into the awful Past, with its doings, bad and good, recorded on high. What was that? George lifted his head and his ears. A murmur of suppressed voices, angry voices, too, sounded near him, in one of which George thought he recognized the tones of Charlotte Pain. He went through to an intersecting path, so narrow that one person could with difficulty walk down it, just as a scream rang out on the night air. Panting, scared, breathless, her face distorted with fear or passion, as much as George could see of it in the shaded light, her gauze dress torn by every tree with which it came in contact, flying down the narrow pathway, came Charlotte Pain. And--unless George Godolphin was strangely mistaken--some one else was flying in equal terror in the opposite direction, as if they had just parted. "Charlotte! What is it? Who has alarmed you?" In the moment's first impulse he caught hold of her to protect her; in the second, he loosed his hold, and made after the other fugitive. The impression upon George's mind was, that some one, perhaps a stranger, had met Charlotte, and frightened her with rude words.