“Excuse my troubling you with this letter; it is on my conscience to write it.  If you know any of her relations, please warn them that time is not to be wasted.  If they lose to-morrow, they may lose the last chance of finding her.

“Your humble servant,

“CATHERINE RUDDOCK.”

X.

From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Ruddock.

“Lincoln’s Inn Fields, June 2d.

“MADAM—­MY only connection with Mrs. Noel Vanstone was a professional one, and that connection is now at an end.  I am not acquainted with any of her friends; and I cannot undertake to interfere personally, either with her present or future proceedings.

“Regretting my inability to afford you any assistance, I remain, your obedient servant,

“JOHN LOSCOMBE.”

THE LAST SCENE.

AARON’S BUILDINGS

CHAPTER I.

ON the seventh of June, the owners of the merchantman Deliverance received news that the ship had touched at Plymouth to land passengers, and had then continued her homeward voyage to the Port of London.  Five days later, the vessel was in the river, and was towed into the East India Docks.

Having transacted the business on shore for which he was personally responsible, Captain Kirke made the necessary arrangements, by letter, for visiting his brother-in-law’s parsonage in Suffolk, on the seventeenth of the month.  As usual in such cases, he received a list of commissions to execute for his sister on the day before he left London.  One of these commissions took him into the neighborhood of Camden Town.  He drove to his destination from the Docks; and then, dismissing the vehicle, set forth to walk back southward, toward the New Road.

He was not well acquainted with the district; and his attention wandered further and further away from the scene around him as he went on.  His thoughts, roused by the prospect of seeing his sister again, had led his memory back to the night when he had parted from her, leaving the house on foot.  The spell so strangely laid on him, in that past time, had kept its hold through all after-events.  The face that had haunted him on the lonely road had haunted him again on the lonely sea.  The woman who had followed him, as in a dream, to his sister’s door, had followed him—­thought of his thought, and spirit of his spirit—­to the deck of his ship.  Through storm and calm on the voyage out, through storm and calm on the voyage home, she had been with him.  In the ceaseless turmoil of the London streets, she was with him now.  He knew what the first question on his lips would be, when he had seen his sister and her boys.  “I shall try to talk of something else,” he thought; “but when Lizzie and I am alone, it will come out in spite of me.”

The necessity of waiting to let a string of carts pass at a turning before he crossed awakened him to present things.  He looked about in a momentary confusion.  The street was strange to him; he had lost his way.