Mr. Turnbull was one of those heavy, comfortable persons who are willing to take everybody's business and reasons for granted. He therefore bored me with no surmises as to the reasons of my solitary excursion at so oddly chosen a time. I think, now, that my wiser course would have been to go to the vicar, and explaining generally my objections to remaining at Dorracleugh, to have asked frankly for permission to place myself under his care until the arrival of Mr. Blount. There were fifty other things I ought to have thought of, though I only wonder, considering the state in which my mind was at the moment, that I was able to write so coherently as I did to the vicar. I had my purse with me, containing fifty pounds, which poor Sir Harry had given me just before he left Dorracleugh. With no more than this, which I had fortunately brought down with me to the drawing-room, for the purpose of giving my maid a bank-note to take to the town to pay for my intended purchases, I was starting on my journey to London! Without luggage, or servant, or companion, or plan of any kind--inspired by the one instinct, to get as rapidly as possible out of sight and reach of Dorracleugh, and to earn my bread by my own exertions. CHAPTER LXVI. LAURA GREY. You are to suppose my journey safely ended in London. The first thing I did after securing lodgings, and making some few purchases, was to go to the house where my great friend Sir Harry Rokestone, had died. But Mr. Blount, I found, had left London for Golden Friars, only a few hours before my arrival. Another disappointment awaited me at Mr. Forrester's chambers--he was out of town, taking his holiday. I began now to experience the consequences of my precipitation. It was too late, however, to reflect; and if the plunge was to be made, perhaps the sooner the better. I wrote to the vicar, to give him my address, also to Mr. Blount, telling him the course on which I had decided. I at once resolved to look for a situation, as governess to very young children. I framed an advertisement with a great deal of care, which I published in the _Times_; but no satisfactory result followed, and two or three days passed in like manner. After paying for my journey, and my London purchases, there remained to me, of my fifty pounds, about thirty-two. My situation was not so frightful as it might have been. But with the strictest economy a limited time must see my store exhausted; and no one who has not been in such a situation can fancy the ever-recurring panic of counting, day after day, the diminishing chances between you and the chasm to whose edge you are slowly sliding.