While I was still in doubt, my earliest impressions of childhood came back to my memory; and influenced by them, I thought of Cornwall.  My nurse had been a Cornish woman; my first fancies and first feelings of curiosity had been excited by her Cornish stories, by the descriptions of the scenery, the customs, and the people of her native land, with which she was ever ready to amuse me.  As I grew older, it had always been one of my favourite projects to go to Cornwall, to explore the wild western land, on foot, from hill to hill throughout.  And now, when no motive of pleasure could influence my choice—­now, when I was going forth homeless and alone, in uncertainty, in grief, in peril—­the old fancy of long-past days still kept its influence, and pointed out my new path to me among the rocky boundaries of the Cornish shore.

My last night in London was a night made terrible by Mannion’s fearful image in all my dreams—­made mournful, in my waking moments, by thoughts of the morrow which was to separate me from Clara.  But I never faltered in my resolution to leave London for her sake.  When the morning came, I collected my few necessaries, added to them one or two books, and was ready to depart.

My way through the streets took me near my father’s house.  As I passed by the well-remembered neighbourhood, my self-control so far deserted me, that I stopped and turned aside into the Square, in the hope of seeing Clara once more before I went away.  Cautiously and doubtfully, as if I was a trespasser even on the public pavement, I looked up at the house which was no more my home—­at the windows, side by side, of my sister’s sitting-room and bed-room.  She was neither standing near them, nor passing accidentally from one room to another at that moment.  Still I could not persuade myself to go on.  I thought of many and many an act of kindness that she had done for me, which I seemed never to have appreciated until now—­I thought of what she had suffered, and might yet suffer, for my sake—­and the longing to see her once more, though only for an instant, still kept me lingering near the house and looking up vainly at the lonely windows.

It was a bright, cool, autumnal morning; perhaps she might have gone out into the garden of the square:  it used often to be her habit, when I was at home, to go there and read at this hour.  I walked round, outside the railings, searching for her between gaps in the foliage; and had nearly made the circuit of the garden thus, before the figure of a lady sitting alone under one of the trees, attracted my attention.  I stopped—­looked intently towards her—­and saw that it was Clara.