I will do anything he wants about searching for Forrester--he cannot be more anxious about it than I am--but I have every reason for wishing to remain unknown." "You forget that it is hardly possible he can fail to know your name; and he has friends, some of whom I believe are deeply interested in your welfare." Jeffreys shuddered.
"I can't say more," said he.

"I will do all I can, but I want to see nobody but you." "I may, of course, report this interview to my client ?" "Of course; I can't prevent that." "And I must tell him you definitely refuse to meet him." "Yes.

I cannot see him." "Or tell him your address ?" "No; you know where a letter would find me." "Well, will you call again--say this day week ?" "Yes; to see you alone." Thus the unsatisfactory interview ended.
Mr Wilkins was a man of honour, and felt he had no right to insist on Jeffreys opening communications with the colonel; still less had he the right as he might easily have done, to track his footsteps and discover his hiding-place.
Jeffreys, alive to a sense of insecurity, evidently expected the possibility of some such friendly ruse, for he returned to his work by a long and circuitous course which would have baffled even the cleverest of detectives.

He seriously debated with himself that night the desirability of vacating his garret at Storr Alley and seeking lodgings somewhere else.

His old life seemed hemming him in; and like the wary hare, he felt the inclination to double on his pursuers and give them the slip.
For, rightly or wrongly, he had convinced himself that the one calamity to be dreaded was his recapture by the friends in whose house his bad name had played him so evil a revenge.
Yet how could he leave Storr Alley?
Had he not ties there?
Was it not worth worlds to him to hear now and then, on his return at night, some scrap of news of the ministering angel whose visits cheered the place in his absence?
He shrank more than ever from a chance meeting; but was it not a pardonable self-indulgence to stay where he could hear and even speak of her?
Nor was that his only tie now.
Mrs Pratt, in the room below, had never recovered yet from the illness that had prostrated her at little Annie's death; and night by night Jeffreys had carried the two babies to his own attic in order to give her the rest she needed, and watch over them in their hours of cold and restlessness.
He became an expert nurse.