MR.

JOHN SOMERVILLE Jack's appearance on the scene had set Mrs.Hardwick to thinking.

This was the substance of her reflections: Ida, whom she had kidnaped for certain reasons of her own, was likely to prove an incumbrance rather than a source of profit.

The child, her suspicions awakened in regard to the character of the money she had been employed to pass off, was no longer available for that purpose.
Under these circumstances Peg bethought herself of the ultimate object which she had proposed to herself in kidnaping Ida--that of extorting money from a man who has not hitherto figured in our story.
John Somerville occupied a suite of apartments in a handsome lodging house in Walnut Street.

A man wanting yet several years of forty, he looked many years older than that age.