Hilliard pursued her in a parallel line.  At the top of the street she crossed towards him; he let her pass by and followed closely.  She entered the booking-office of Gower Street station; he drew as near as possible and heard her ask for a ticket—­

“Healtheries; third return.”

The slang term for the Health Exhibition at Kensington was familiar to him from the English papers he had seen in Paris.  As soon as Eve had passed on he obtained a like ticket and hastened down the steps in pursuit.  A minute or two and he was sitting face to face with her in the railway carriage.

He could now observe her at his leisure and compare her features with those represented in the photograph.  Mrs. Brewer had said truly that the portrait did not do her justice; he saw the resemblance, yet what a difference between the face he had brooded over at Dudley and that which lived before him!  A difference not to be accounted for by mere lapse of time.  She could not, he thought, have changed greatly in the last two or three years, for her age at the time of sitting for the photograph must have been at least one-and-twenty.  She did not look older than he had expected:  it was still a young face, but—­and herein he found its strangeness—­that of a woman who views life without embarrassment, without anxiety.  She sat at her ease, casting careless glances this way and that.  When her eyes fell upon him he winced, yet she paid no more heed to him than to the other passengers.

Presently she became lost in thought; her eyes fell.  Ah! now the resemblance to the portrait came out more distinctly.  Her lips shaped themselves to that expression which he knew so well, the half-smile telling of habitual sadness.

His fixed gaze recalled her to herself, and immediately the countenance changed beyond recognition.  Her eyes wandered past him with a look of cold if not defiant reserve; the lips lost all their sweetness.  He was chilled with vague distrust, and once again asked himself whether this could be the Eve Madeley whose history he had heard.

Again she fell into abstraction, and some trouble seemed to grow upon her mind.  It was difficult now to identify her with the girl who had talked and laughed so gaily last evening.  Towards the end of the journey a nervous restlessness began to appear in her looks and movements.  Hilliard felt that he had annoyed her by the persistency of his observation, and tried to keep his eyes averted.  But no; the disturbance she betrayed was due to some other cause; probably she paid not the least regard to him.

At Earl’s Court she alighted hurriedly.  By this time Hilliard had begun to feel shame in the ignoble part he was playing, but choice he had none—­the girl drew him irresistibly to follow and watch her.  Among the crowd entering the Exhibition he could easily keep her in sight without risk of his espial being detected.  That Eve had come to keep an appointment with some acquaintance he felt sure, and at any cost he must discover who the person was.