Sophia by Stanley J. Weyman

The chairmen pushed on briskly through Piccadilly and Portugal Street until they reached the turnpike on the skirts of the town. There, turning to the right by Berkeley Row, they reached Berkeley Square, at that time a wide, implanted space, surrounded on three sides by new mansions, and on the fourth by the dead wall of Berkeley House. For lack of lighting, or perhaps by reason of the convenience the building operations afforded, it was a favourite haunt of footpads. Sophia was a prey to anxieties that left no room in her mind for terrors of this class; and neither the dark lane, shadowed by the dead wall of Berkeley Gardens nor the gloomy waste of the square, held any tremors for her; but the chairmen hastened over this part of their journey, and for a time her attendant squire was so little in evidence that in the agitation into which the prospect of arrival at her lover's threw her, she forgot his presence. She strained her eyes through the darkness to distinguish the opening of Davies Street, and at once longed and feared to see it. When at last the chair halted, and, pressing her hand to her heart to still the tumult that almost stifled her, she prepared to descend, it was with a kind of shock that she discovered the little dandy mincing and bowing on the pavement, his hand extended to aid her in stepping from the chair.

The vexation she had suppressed before broke out at the sight. She bowed slightly, and avoided his hand. "I am obliged to you, sir," she said ungraciously; "I won't trouble you farther. Good night, sir."