“Thanks,” I said; and then after a moment’s pause I added, “I suppose if I addressed a letter here it would be forwarded?”

“I s’pose so,” she admitted a little grudgingly.

There seemed to be nothing more to say, so bidding the damsel good-night, I walked off down the passage and out on to the embankment.  If I had drawn a blank as far as seeing Tommy was concerned, my evening had not been altogether fruitless.  I felt vastly curious as to who Miss Vivien might be.  Somehow or other I couldn’t picture Tommy with a woman in his life.  In the old days, partly from shyness and partly, I think, because they honestly bored him, he had always avoided girls with a determination that at times bordered on rudeness.  And yet, unless all the signs were misleading, it was evident that he and his next-door neighbour were on fairly intimate terms.  The most probable explanation seemed to me that she was some elderly lady artist who darned his socks for him, and shed tears in secret over the state of his wardrobe.  There was a magnificent uncouthness about Tommy which would appeal irresistibly to a certain type of motherly woman.

I strolled up the embankment in the direction of Chelsea Bridge, smiling to myself over the idea.  Whether it was right or not, it presented such a pleasing picture that I had walked several hundred yards before I quite woke up to my surroundings.  Then with a sudden start I realized that I was quite close to George’s house.

It was a big red-brick affair, standing back from the embankment facing the river.  As I came opposite I could see that there was a light on the first floor, in the room which I knew George used as a study.  I stopped for a minute, leaning back against the low wall and staring up at the window.

I wondered what my cousin was doing.  Perhaps he was sitting there, looking through the evening paper in the vain hope of finding news of my capture.  I could almost see the lines on his forehead and the nervous, jerky way in which he would be biting his fingers—­a trick of his that had always annoyed me intensely.  He would bite harder than ever if he only knew that I was standing outside in the darkness not more than twenty yards away from him!

I waited for a little while in the hope that he might come to the window, but this luxury was denied me.

“Good-night, George,” I said softly; “we’ll meet in the morning,” and then, with a last affectionate look at the lighted blind, I continued my way along the embankment.

I was not sure which turning I ought to take for Edith Terrace, but an obliging policeman who was on duty outside the Tate Gallery put me on the right track.  There was something delicately pleasing to my sense of humour in appealing to a constable, and altogether it was in a most contented frame of mind that I inserted my latch-key into Mrs. Oldbury’s door and let myself into the house.  My first day’s holiday seemed to me to have been quite a success.