succeeded in getting possession of the child. Wait a little
before you laugh at me. But for the courier, the thing would have
really happened a week since."

Randal looked astonished. "Months must have passed," he objected.
"Surely, after that lapse of time, Mrs. Linley must have been
safe from discovery."

"Take your own positive view of it! I only know that the thing
happened. And why not? The luck had begun by being on one
side--why shouldn't the other side have had its turn next?"

"Do you really believe in luck?"

"Devoutly. A lawyer must believe in something. He knows the law
too well to put any faith in that: and his clients present to him
(if he is a man of any feeling) a hideous view of human nature.
The poor devil believes in luck--rather than believe in nothing.
I think it quite likely that accident helped the person employed
by the husband to discover the wife and child. Anyhow, Mrs.
Linley and Kitty were seen in the streets of Hanover; seen,
recognized, and followed. The courier happened to be with
them--luck again! For thirty years and more, he had been
traveling in every part of Europe; there was not a landlord of
the smallest pretensions anywhere who didn't know him and like
him. 'I pretended not to see that anybody was following us,' he
said (writing from Hanover to relieve my anxiety); 'and I took
the ladies to a hotel. The hotel possessed two merits from our
point of view--it had a way out at the back, through the stables,
and it was kept by a landlord who was an excellent good friend of