“A watch,” repeated Mr. Grewgious musingly. “Ay!”
“Which would not only of itself haunt and torture his life,” said Mr. Crisparkle warmly, “but would expose him to the torment of a perpetually reviving suspicion, whatever he might do, or wherever he might go?”
“Ay!” said Mr. Grewgious musingly still. “Do I see him waiting for you?”
“No doubt you do.”
“Then would you have the goodness to excuse my getting up to see you out, and to go out to join him, and to go the way that you were going, and to take no notice of our local friend?” said Mr. Grewgious. “I entertain a sort of fancy for having him under my eye tonight, do you know?”
Mr. Crisparkle, with a significant nod, complied, and, rejoining Neville, went away with him. They dined together, and parted at the yet unfinished and undeveloped railway station: Mr. Crisparkle to get home; Neville to walk the streets, cross the bridges, make a wide round of the city in the friendly darkness, and tire himself out.
It was midnight when he returned from his solitary expedition, and climbed his staircase. The night was hot, and the windows of the staircase were all wide open. Coming to the top, it gave him a passing chill of surprise (there being no rooms but his up there) to find a stranger sitting on the windowsill, more after the manner of a venturesome glazier than an amateur ordinarily careful of his neck; in fact, so much more outside the window than inside, as to suggest the thought that he must have come up by the waterspout instead of the stairs.
The stranger said nothing until Neville put his key in his door; then, seeming to make sure of his identity from the action, he spoke: