Her face was almost entirely turned from me; but I knew her by her dress, by her figure—­even by her position, simple as it was.  She was sitting with her hands on a closed book which rested on her knee.  A little spaniel that I had given her lay asleep at her feet:  she seemed to be looking down at the animal, as far as I could tell by the position of her head.  When I moved aside, to try if I could see her face, the trees hid her from sight.  I was obliged to be satisfied with the little I could discern of her, through the one gap in the foliage which gave me a clear view of the place where she was sitting.  To speak to her, to risk the misery to both of us of saying farewell, was more than I dared trust myself to do.  I could only stand silent, and look at her—­it might be for the last time!—­until the tears gathered in my eyes, so that I could see nothing more.  I resisted the temptation to dash them away.  While they still hid her from me—­while I could not see her again, if I would—­I turned from the garden view, and left the Square.

Amid all the thoughts which thronged on me, as I walked farther and farther away from the neighbourhood of what was once my home; amid all the remembrances of past events—­from the first day when I met Margaret Sherwin to the day when I stood by her grave—­which were recalled by the mere act of leaving London, there now arose in my mind, for the first time, a doubt, which from that day to this has never left it; a doubt whether Mannion might not be tracking me in secret along every step of my way.

I stopped instinctively, and looked behind me.  Many figures were moving in the distance; but the figure that I had seen in the churchyard was nowhere visible among them.  A little further on, I looked back again, and still with the same result.  After this, I let a longer interval elapse before I stopped; and then, for the third time, I turned round, and scanned the busy street-scene behind me, with eager, suspicious eyes.  Some little distance back, on the opposite side of the way, I caught sight of a man who was standing still (as I was standing), amid the moving throng.  His height was like Mannion’s height; and he wore a cloak like the cloak I had seen on Mannion, when he approached me at Margaret’s grave.  More than this I could not detect, without crossing over.  The passing vehicles and foot-passengers constantly intercepted my view, from the position in which I stood.

Was this figure, thus visible only by intervals, the figure of Mannion? and was he really tracking my steps?  As the suspicion strengthened in my mind that it was so, the remembrance of his threat in the churchyard:  “You may shield yourself behind your family and your friends:  I will strike at you through the dearest and the bravest of them—­” suddenly recurred to me; and brought with it a thought which urged me instantly to proceed on my way.  I never looked behind me again, as I now walked on; for I said within myself:—­“If he is following me, I must not, and will not avoid him:  it will be the best result of my departure, that I shall draw after me that destroying presence; and thus at least remove it far and safely away from my family and my home!”