Mrs. Brenton that he was going to town by the first train in the morning.

She translated this to mean a sudden retreat on his part. For there had been a half arrangement that he should take her back to London in his motor, and as the chauffeur had promised that the car would be at Yelverton either late that night or very early the next morning, there was no reason why this engagement should be broken. She ate the rest of her dinner in a subdued manner, and as she followed the other women out of the room she paused a moment by Haverford's side.

"So you won't motor back to-morrow?" she said hurriedly. "I am quite disappointed.... I was looking forward to it."

His face flushed.

"I am sorry," he answered, "but I must go up quite early; my mother is not well," he explained.

"Oh!" said Camilla; she was at once reassured "I am so sorry. I hope you are not very anxious? But you must tell me about it a little later." And gathering her clinging black draperies in her hand she smiled up at him and then fluttered through the doorway and vanished.

Whilst the other women were talking together, Mrs. Brenton found herself alone with Camilla.

"I want to say something to you," she said in a low voice.

"Is it anything nice?" asked Camilla, with a faint smile.

Mrs. Brenton touched the black chiffon that bordered Camilla's beautiful shoulders with a caressing hand.

"I don't want you to play for such heavy points to-night, darling," she said; "it is all very well if the money comes back to you, but I am afraid you have been losing rather heavily since you came down here, haven't you? Sometimes I feel tempted," Mrs. Brenton went on, "to impose a maximum sum for points here, but I suppose I should get myself well hated if I did! People would say it is a free country, and they ought to do what they like with their own."

"That is why you are scolding me," said Camilla, with her pretty smile.

Mrs. Brenton shook her head.

"You are not other people to me, and I do hate to see you risking too much, Camilla."

Camilla turned and just lightly kissed Mrs. Brenton's hand.

"Oh, we must risk something sometimes!" she said impatiently; then she added, "Don't worry about me, dear old thing, I really haven't lost very much, and I dare say I shall get it all back to-night. I feel in luck. Look"—she held out her wrist—"isn't this a sweet thing? Sammy has just given it to me to wear as a charm. He brought it from some weird place in America, and declares it is a magic stone, and that I shall have everything I want now that I wear it. I must go and show it to Ena Bayliss," Camilla said, with a wicked smile. "She will be so jealous! She rather affects Sammy, you know...."

When the men came there was no opportunity for a little chat between Mrs. Lancing and Haverford, for the card-players seated themselves immediately at the tables.

Mrs. Brenton, who was not a bridge fanatic, beckoned to Rupert Haverford to come and sit with her in her pet corner.

She teased him heartily for a little while about his breakdown that afternoon.

"You will never get me in that magnificent car of yours again," she said. "Why don't you have horses? You look just the sort of man who would have good animals, and know how to treat them well."

"I have a few horses," Haverford answered; "you must come and see them one day, if you will, Mrs. Brenton. I don't quite know why I took to motoring, except that I have a leaning towards engineering, and the mechanism of the cars interests me, and then I like rushing about. I have not yet got used to my idle life," he said, a little restlessly. "Old habits are very strong with me; I wake every morning of my life at five o'clock, Mrs. Brenton, and I can't lie in bed a moment afterwards. You see, for nearly seventeen years I was accustomed to be out and at work by six o'clock every day."

Mrs. Brenton had taken up some knitting, and her fingers were moving briskly, though her eyes were fixed on her companion.

"I should so like to know all about those days," she said; "I dare say lots of people would not believe you if you were to say it, Mr. Haverford," she added half lightly, "but I came to a conclusion about you a long time ago, and that conclusion is, that you are the sort of man who is only happy when he is working—working seriously, I mean, from morning to night. But you are not always idle now, are you?"

Haverford laughed.

"I don't think I do an hour's work in a week," he said. "Very often the old call is so strong that I turn my back on all my greatness, and I steal away to the north, to the dirty, smoky, dull old town where I lived so long. But"—he laughed again, this time half sadly—"there is nothing for me to do; another man fills my old post and fills it well. However, I am planning a different future; I have certain pet schemes of my own which I have not yet put into working order. When I have started them they will help at least to pass some of my time more profitably than I pass it now."

"What sort of schemes?" asked Mrs. Brenton. He did not answer her at once; he was looking at the card-players, at Camilla's dainty figure. The lines of her throat and shoulders were exquisite, framed in the black of her gown. She was laughing; he loved to hear her laugh, it was such young laughter.

"Oh!" he said, rousing himself, "they are just some fancies that have come to me; I will tell you about them, Mrs. Brenton, when I have them more planned out—I am going to travel," he added a little abruptly. "Ever since I was a boy I have longed to see the other side of the world! I don't quite know why I have not gone long ago." He was smoking at Mrs. Brenton's wish, and he broke off some of the cigar ash into a silver tray.

"I got my first love of wandering when I was a very little lad," he said in his rather abrupt way. "My father brought me up on travel books and books of adventure. He had so longed to know other countries and other people, but this was denied him——If he had lived——!" He broke off sharply. Agnes Brenton looked at him; he was frowning, and he was staring into the fire; he seemed to have drifted far, far away in his thoughts from the light and warmth and cosy charm of his actual surroundings.

Suddenly he turned and looked at her; his eyes were very bright.

"My father was a hero," he said—there was something in his voice that made Mrs. Brenton bite her lip nervously—"he was a doctor—a man who worked all day and sometimes all night in that crowded, tragically poor factory town where I spent so many years of my life. I worshipped my father, Mrs. Brenton; he was an enthusiast, a dreamer, a saint. He died in harness, sacrificed to the poverty and misery of the people, who were his first thought. There was a fearful outbreak of fever and diphtheria, and he did superhuman work." Haverford shrugged his shoulders; he was trying to speak evenly. "Every man's endurance has a limit, and my father paid the natural, the inevitable penalty. That was a great many years ago, but he lives with me almost as clearly as though he were really in existence now! I have only one reproach against his memory"—the young man got up restlessly. His cigar had gone out, he found a box of matches, and lit it again. "He sent me away to avoid the infection," he said In a low voice, "and he died before I could get to him! That was hard! He could never have realized how hard that was to me, or surely he would not have done it."

Mrs. Brenton's eyes were wet. It was not alone his story, the strained tones of his voice that moved her; the man himself appealed to her sharply, and for the first time. She marvelled as she listened, as she looked at him now, how she could have so misunderstood him. It had become the fashion with most people to call Rupert Haverford hard names, to find him mean, selfish, and ungenerous; Mrs. Brenton had never gone so far as that. She had, in truth, judged him leniently, recognizing in his blunt fashion of