Her eye lighted up.  She sent Cytherea back to the hotel in a cab, then turned round by Piccadilly into Bond Street, and proceeded to the rooms of the Institute.  The secretary was sitting in the lobby.  After making her payment, and looking at a few of the drawings on the walls, in the company of three gentlemen, the only other visitors to the exhibition, she turned back and asked if she might be allowed to see a list of the members.  She was a little connected with the architectural world, she said, with a smile, and was interested in some of the names.

‘Here it is, madam,’ he replied, politely handing her a pamphlet containing the names.

Miss Aldclyffe turned the leaves till she came to the letter M. The name she hoped to find there was there, with the address appended, as was the case with all the rest.

The address was at some chambers in a street not far from Charing Cross.  ‘Chambers,’ as a residence, had always been assumed by the lady to imply the condition of a bachelor.  She murmured two words, ‘There still.’

Another request had yet to be made, but it was of a more noticeable kind than the first, and might compromise the secrecy with which she wished to act throughout this episode.  Her object was to get one of the envelopes lying on the secretary’s table, stamped with the die of the Institute; and in order to get it she was about to ask if she might write a note.

But the secretary’s back chanced to be turned, and he now went towards one of the men at the other end of the room, who had called him to ask some question relating to an etching on the wall.  Quick as thought, Miss Aldclyffe stood before the table, slipped her hand behind her, took one of the envelopes and put it in her pocket.

She sauntered round the rooms for two or three minutes longer, then withdrew and returned to her hotel.

Here she cut the Knapwater advertisement from the paper, put it into the envelope she had stolen, embossed with the society’s stamp, and directed it in a round clerkly hand to the address she had seen in the list of members’ names submitted to her:—­

     AENEAS MANSTON, ESQ.,
          WYKEHAM CHAMBERS,
               SPRING GARDENS.

This ended her first day’s work in London.

4.  FROM AUGUST THE TWENTY-SIXTH TO SEPTEMBER THE FIRST

The two Cythereas continued at the Westminster Hotel, Miss Aldclyffe informing her companion that business would detain them in London another week.  The days passed as slowly and quietly as days can pass in a city at that time of the year, the shuttered windows about the squares and terraces confronting their eyes like the white and sightless orbs of blind men.  On Thursday Mr. Nyttleton called, bringing the whole number of replies to the advertisement.  Cytherea was present at the interview, by Miss Aldclyffe’s request—­either from whim or design.

Ten additional letters were the result of the second week’s insertion, making fifty-five in all.  Miss Aldclyffe looked them over as before.  One was signed—­