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“Mrs. Vincent was in a dying state, according to the telegraphic message,” Robert thought. “If I do find her, I shall at least succeed in discovering whether that message was genuine.”

He found Crescent Villas after some difficulty. The houses were large, but they lay half imbedded among the chaos of brick and rising mortar around them. New terraces, new streets, new squares led away into hopeless masses of stone and plaster on every side. The roads were sticky with damp clay, which clogged the wheels of the cab and buried the fetlocks of the horse. The desolations—that awful aspect of incompleteness and discomfort which pervades a new and unfinished neighborhood—had set its dismal seal upon the surrounding streets which had arisen about and intrenched Crescent Villas; and Robert wasted forty minutes by his watch, and an hour and a quarter by the cabman’s reckoning, in driving up and down uninhabited streets and terraces, trying to find the Villase; whose chimney-tops were frowning down upon him black and venerable, amid groves of virgin plaster, undimmed by time or smoke.

But having at last succeeded in reaching his destination, Mr. Audley alighted from the cab, directed the driver to wait for him at a certain corner, and set out upon his voyage of discovery.

“If I were a distinguished Q.C., I could not do this sort of thing,” he thought; “my time would be worth a guinea or so a minute, and I should be retained in the great case of Hoggs vs. Boggs, going forward this very day before a special jury at Westminster Hall. As it is, I can afford to be patient.”

He inquired for Mrs. Vincent at the number which Mr. Dawson had given him. The maid who opened the door had never heard that lady’s name; but after going to inquire of her mistress, she returned to tell Robert that Mrs. Vincent had lived there, but that she had left two months before the present occupants had entered the house, “and missus has been here fifteen months,” the girl added emphatically.

“But you cannot tell where she went on leaving here?” Robert asked, despondingly.

“No, sir; missus says she believes the lady failed, and that she left sudden like, and didn’t want her address to be known in the neighborhood.”

Mr. Audley felt himself at a standstill once more. If Mrs. Vincent had left the place in debt, she had no doubt scrupulously concealed her whereabouts. There was little hope, then, of learning her address from the tradespeople; and yet, on the other hand, it was just possible that some of her sharpest creditors might have made it their business to discover the defaulter’s retreat.

He looked about him for the nearest shops, and found a baker’s, a stationer’s, and a fruiterer’s a few paces from the Crescent. Three empty-looking, pretentious shops, with plate-glass windows, and a hopeless air of gentility.

He stopped at the baker’s, who called himself a pastrycook and confectioner, and exhibited some specimens of petrified sponge-cake in glass bottles, and some highly-glazed tarts, covered with green gauze.

“She must have bought bread,” Robert thought, as he deliberated before the baker’s shop; “and she is likely to have bought it at the handiest place. I’ll try the baker.”

The baker was standing behind his counter, disputing the items of a bill with a shabby-genteel young woman. He did not trouble himself to attend to Robert Audley until he had settled the dispute, but he looked up as he was receipting the bill, and asked the barrister what he pleased to want.

“Can you tell me the address of a Mrs. Vincent, who lived at No. 9 Crescent Villas a year and a half ago?” Mr. Audley inquired, mildly.

“No, I can’t,” answered the baker, growing very red in the face, and speaking in an unnecessarily loud voice; “and what’s more, I wish I could. That lady owes me upward of eleven pound for bread, and it’s rather more than I can afford to lose. If anybody can tell me where she lives, I shall be much obliged to ’em for so doing.”