‘It was Mr. Dunborough!’ she cried with indignation.

‘I know, I know,’ he said.  ’He is behind with Sir George Soane.  Sir George and I followed you.  We met him, and Sir George compelled him to accompany us.’

‘Compelled him?’ she said.

‘Ay, with a pistol to his head,’ the lawyer answered; and chuckled and leapt in his seat—­for he had re-entered the carriage—­at the remembrance.  ’Oh, Lord, I declare I have lived a year in the last two days.  And to think that I should be the one to bring you back!’ he repeated.  ’To bring you back!  But there, what happened to you?  I know that they set you down in the road.  We learned that at Bristol this afternoon from the villains who carried you off.’

She told him how they had found.  Mr. Pomeroy’s house, and taken shelter there, and—­

‘You have been there until now?’ he said in amazement.  ’At a gentleman’s house?  But did you not think, child, that we should be anxious?  Were there no horses?  No servants?  Didn’t you think of sending word to Marlborough?’

‘He was a villain,’ she answered, shuddering.  Brave as she was, Mr. Pomeroy had succeeded in frightening her.  ’He would not let me go.  And if Mr. Thomasson had not stolen the key of the room and released me, and brought me to the gate to-night, and put me in with you—­’

‘But how did he know that I was passing?’ Mr. Fishwick cried, thrusting back his wig and rubbing his head in perplexity.  He could not yet believe that it was chance and only chance had brought them together.

And she was equally ignorant.  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.  ’He only told me—­that he would have a carriage waiting at the gate.’

‘And why did he not come with you?’

‘He said—­I think he said he was under obligations to Mr. Pomeroy.’

‘Pomeroy?  Pomeroy?’ the lawyer repeated slowly.  ’But sure, my dear, if he was a villain, still, having the clergyman with you you should have been safe.  This Mr. Pomeroy was not in the same case as Mr. Dunborough.  He could not have been deep in love after knowing you a dozen hours.’

‘I think,’ she said, but mechanically, as if her mind ran on something else, ‘that he knew who I was, and wished to make me marry him.’

‘Who you were!’ Mr. Fishwick repeated; and—­and he groaned.

The sudden check was strange, and Julia should have remarked it.  But she did not; and after a short silence, ‘How could he know?’ Mr. Fishwick asked faintly.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered, in the same absent manner.  Then with an effort which was apparent in her tone, ‘Lord Almeric Doyley was there,’ she said.  ‘He was there too.’

‘Ah!’ the lawyer replied, accepting the fact with remarkable apathy.  Perhaps his thoughts also were far away.  ‘He was there, was he?’

‘Yes,’ she said.  ‘He was there, and he—­’ then, in a changed tone, ’Did you say that Sir George was behind us?’