It was a long drive from St. Diddulph’s in the east, to Marylebone in the west, of London.  None of the party in the cab knew anything of the region through which they passed.  The cabman took the line by the back of the Bank, and Finsbury Square and the City Road, thinking it best, probably, to avoid the crush at Holborn Hill, though at the expense of something of a circuit.  But of this Mrs Trevelyan and Nora knew nothing.  Had their way taken them along Piccadilly, or through Mayfair, or across Grosvenor Square, they would have known where they were; but at present they were not thinking of those once much-loved localities.  The cab passed the Angel, and up and down the hill at Pentonville, and by the King’s Cross stations, and through Euston Square and then it turned up Gower Street.  Surely the man should have gone on along the New Road, now that he had come so far out of his way.  But of this the two ladies knew nothing nor did the nurse.  It was a dark, windy night, but the lamps in the streets had given them light, so that they had not noticed the night.  Nor did they notice it now as the streets became narrower and darker.  They were hardly thinking that their journey was yet at an end, and the mother was in the act of covering her boy’s face as he lay asleep on the nurse’s lap, when the cab was stopped.  Nora looking out through the window, saw the word ‘Hotel’ over a doorway, and was satisfied.’shall I take the child, ma’am?’ said a man in black, and the child was handed out.  Nora was the first to follow, and she then perceived that the door of the hotel was not open.  Mrs Trevelyan followed; and then they looked round them and the child was gone.  They heard the rattle of another cab as it was carried away at a gallop round a distant corner and then some inkling of what had happened came upon them.  The father had succeeded in getting possession of his child.

It was a narrow, dark street, very quiet, having about it a certain air of poor respectability an obscure, noiseless street, without even a sign of life.  Some unfortunate one had endeavoured here to keep an hotel, but there was no hotel kept there now.  There had been much craft in selecting the place in which the child had been taken from them.  As they looked around them, perceiving the terrible misfortune which had befallen them, there was not a human being near them save the cabman, who was occupied in unchaining, or pretending to unchain the heavy mass of luggage on the roof.  The windows of the house before which they were stopping, were closed, and Nora perceived at once that the hotel was not inhabited.  The cabman must have perceived it also.  As for the man who had taken the child, the nurse could only say that he was dressed in black, like a waiter, that he had a napkin under his arm, and no hat on his head.  He had taken the boy tenderly in his arms and then she had seen nothing further.  The first thing that Nora had seen, as she stood on the pavement, was the other cab moving off rapidly.