Her one anxiety was for Ambrose.
"He ought to be here," she said to me.

"The wretches in this neighborhood are wicked enough to say that his absence is a confession of his guilt." She was right.

In the present temper of the popular mind, the absence of Ambrose was a suspicious circumstance in itself.
"We might telegraph to New York," I suggested, "if you only knew where a message would be likely to find him." "I know the hotel which the Meadowcrofts use at New York," she replied.
"I was sent there, after my father's death, to wait till Miss Meadowcroft could take me to Morwick." We decided on telegraphing to the hotel.

I was writing the message, and Naomi was looking over my shoulder, when we were startled by a strange voice speaking close behind us.
"Oh! that's his address, is it ?" said the voice.

"We wanted his address rather badly." The speaker was a stranger to me.