There could be but one reason.  Margaret was thinking of me, and of what I should feel if I called at North Villa, and had to wait for her till past midnight.  I ran forward to speak to them, as they descended the steps; but exactly at the same moment, my voice was overpowered, and my further progress barred, by a scuffle on the pavement among the people who stood between us.  One man said that his pocket had been picked; others roared to him that they had caught the thief.  There was a fight—­the police came up—­I was surrounded on all sides by a shouting, struggling mob that seemed to have gathered in an instant.

Before I could force myself out of the crowd, and escape into the road, Margaret and Mr. Mannion had hurried into a cab.  I just saw the vehicle driving off rapidly, as I got free.  An empty cab was standing near me—­I jumped into it directly—­and told the man to overtake them.  After having waited my time so patiently, to let a mere accident stop me from going home with them, as I had resolved, was not to be thought of for a moment.  I was hot and angry, after my contest with the crowd; and could have flogged on the miserable cab-horse with my own hand, rather than have failed in my purpose.

We were just getting closer behind them:  I had just put my head out of the window to call to them, and to bid the man who was driving me, call, too—­when their cab abruptly turned down a bye-street, in a direction exactly opposite to the direction which led to North Villa.

What did this mean?  Why were they not going straight home?

The cabman asked me whether he should not hail them before they got farther away from us; frankly confessing, as he put the question, that his horse was nothing like equal to the pace of the horse ahead.  Mechanically, without assignable purpose or motive, I declined his offer, and told him simply to follow at any distance he could.  While the words passed my lips, a strange sensation stole over me:  I seemed to be speaking as the mere mouthpiece of some other voice.  From feeling hot, and moving about restlessly the moment before, I felt unaccountably cold, and sat still now.  What caused this?

My cab stopped.  I looked out, and saw that the horse had fallen.  “We’ve lots of time, Sir,” said the driver, as he coolly stepped off the box, “they are just pulling up further down the road.”  I gave him some money, and got out immediately—­determined to overtake them on foot.

It was a very lonely place—­a colony of half-finished streets, and half-inhabited houses, which had grown up in the neighbourhood of a great railway station.  I heard the fierce scream of the whistle, and the heaving, heavy throb of the engine starting on its journey, as I advanced along the gloomy Square in which I now found myself.  The cab I had been following stood at a turning which led into a long street, occupied towards the farther end, by shops closed for the night, and at the end nearest me, apparently by private houses only.  Margaret and Mr. Mannion hastily left the cab, and without looking either to the right or the left, hurried down the street.  They stopped at the ninth house.  I followed just in time to hear the door closed on them, and to count the number of doors intervening between that door and the Square.