servant to tell Blooming Bess secretly that a friend wished to speak to her in private. Out she came in a few minutes, and I had talk with her, and learned that the woman who had been brought to the Three Tuns, in the middle of the night, was no other than Mary Parkinson. Blooming Bess is a careless, reckless soul, the sort of girl who might have grown into an honest, respectable woman if she had had fair chances. She hadn't, and that is why she is what she is. I don't say it as a boast that I have helped her out of hunger sometimes, and I know she is grateful to me. This afternoon I promised her something which I shall fulfil; she shall have the chance that has never yet been put in her way of becoming a decent member of society. And upon the strength of that promise she told me all I wished to know. It seems that the man, whose name she had obtained, had come in the dead of night to the street in which Mr. Parkinson lived. He did not know the house, and he bribed Blooming Bess to point it out to him. When he thought he had got rid of her, he threw a letter up to Mary Parkinson, whom he had succeeded in awaking, and she came down to him. They went away together, and Blooming Bess saw them drive off in a cab. She had kept watch upon his movements. This morning the scoundrel came to the neighborhood for the purpose of clearing himself from some kind of suspicion which had attached itself to him in relation to Mary Parkinson. He came with a friend." "With me," said Mr. Manners.