I felt the secret inclination strengthening within me to return to Hollyoake Square; to try to see the girl again, or at least to ascertain who she was.  I strove—­yes, I can honestly say, strove to repress the desire.  I tried to laugh it off, as idle and ridiculous; to think of my sister, of the book I was writing, of anything but the one subject that pressed stronger and stronger on me, the harder I struggled against it.  The spell of the syren was over me.  I went out, hypocritically persuading myself, that I was only animated by a capricious curiosity to know the girl’s name, which once satisfied, would leave me at rest on the matter, and free to laugh at my own idleness and folly as soon as I got home again.

I arrived at the house.  The blinds were all drawn down over the front windows, to keep out the sun.  The little slip of garden was left solitary—­baking and cracking in the heat.  The square was silent; desolately silent, as only a suburban square can be.  I walked up and down the glaring pavement, resolved to find out her name before I quitted the place.  While still undecided how to act, a shrill whistling—­sounding doubly shrill in the silence around—­made me look up.

A tradesman’s boy—­one of those town Pucks of the highway; one of those incarnations of precocious cunning, inveterate mischief, and impudent humour, which great cities only can produce—­was approaching me with his empty tray under his arm.  I called to him to come and speak to me.  He evidently belonged to the neighbourhood, and might be made of some use.

His first answer to my inquiries, showed that his master served the household at North Villa.  A present of a shilling secured his attention at once to the few questions of any importance which I desired to put to him.  I learned from his replies, that the name of the master of the house was “Sherwin:”  and that the family only consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Sherwin, and the young lady, their daughter.

My last inquiry addressed to the boy was the most important of all.  Did he know what Mr. Sherwin’s profession or employment was?

His answer startled me into perfect silence.  Mr. Sherwin kept a large linen-draper’s shop in one of the great London thoroughfares!  The boy mentioned the number, and the side of the way on which the house stood—­then asked me if I wanted to know anything more.  I could only tell him by a sign that he might leave me, and that I had heard enough.

Enough?  If he had spoken the truth, I had heard too much.

A linen-draper’s shop—­a linen-draper’s daughter!  Was I still in love?—­I thought of my father; I thought of the name I bore; and this time, though I might have answered the question, I dared not.

But the boy might be wrong.  Perhaps, in mere mischief, he had been deceiving me throughout.  I determined to seek the address he had mentioned, and ascertain the truth for myself.

I reached the place:  there was the shop, and there the name “Sherwin” over the door.  One chance still remained.  This Sherwin and the Sherwin of Hollyoake Square might not be the same.