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 her to hear, distinctly, a footstep that now seemed to follow her own, now to stop till she had proceeded some yards.

It might merely be some workman;—yet would not a workman overtake her, and pass on? It was more probably some traveller. Nevertheless, she would not ascend the hill without making some examination; and, casting a hasty glance behind her, she perceived a tall man, muffled up, whose air denoted him to be a gentleman; but who instantly hung back.

A thousand anxious doubts were now awakened. Was it possible that she had been summoned upon any false pretence? Gabriella had not written; and though that omission had, at first, appeared the natural result of haste upon her arrival; joined to the difficulty of immediately procuring writing implements, it left an opening to uncertainty upon reflection, by no means satisfactory. That she should not personally have presented herself at the house of Mrs. Ireton,