The carriage stopped at the door in Portman Square. Sleepy Jamie went toiling up the wide staircase in the dusk, and Mrs. Verdon slowly followed. Everything looked rich and dim; the plants in the great Indian jars filled the hall with sweet scents. Flowers were blooming in every nook. Through a half-drawn _portiere_ there was a glimpse of Mrs. Tell reading in the shaded lamplight. A motherly woman met Jamie on the landing, and gave him a loving greeting. She had been nurse to Mrs. Verdon's own child. "Ready for bed?" she said in her cheery voice. "What pretty dreams you'll have to-night!" "Horses ran away," Jamie began, opening his blue eyes. "Went faster than my rocking-horse! Dreadful! Don't want to go out in the carriage any more." "Never mind," said nurse, with a little hug, "we won't talk about runaway horses at bedtime. We'll just shut our eyes and think of a field of yellow corn, waving, waving, waving." Elsie had often been troubled with sad visions of Jamie at night. She had pictured him sleeping in rags under an arch, or in some corner of a grimy garret. But fancy had never shown her anything like the dainty little white bed in this spacious room. Gaily-coloured prints decorated the walls, and on a bracket just above the boy's pillow stood a lovely statuette of an angel, with folded wings and down-bent gracious face. When any visitor came up to see the night-nursery, Jamie would point at once to the figure and say proudly, "My guardian angel." An hour or two later, when Jamie, rosy and beautiful, was wrapped in the deep sweet sleep of childhood, Mrs. Verdon and her sister-in-law were sitting together after dinner. "What an eventful day you have had!" said Mrs. Tell, looking up from her knitting in the softly-shaded light. "And what a romantic meeting with Mr. Wayne! Is he all that the Danforths described?" "Of course not," replied Mrs. Verdon. "They described one of the impossible heroes of fiction. You know, they have a talent for description." "But isn't he nice?" Mrs. Tell asked. "Yes, he is nice. There is something about him that is not commonplace." She leaned back in her chair with a half-smile, absently toying with a sprig of lemon-plant. Her slender figure looked graceful in a gown of some soft kind of silk, flowered with faint blue and pink. Looking at her, you somehow imbibed the notion that her hair, eyes, complexion, and dress corresponded with her character. She was faintly coloured. Nothing about her was intense. A vague thought of this kind flitted through Mrs. Tell's brain at this moment. She was not a clever woman, but long intercourse with the world had quickened her faculty for observation, and she was much given to studying Katherine. "Not commonplace," she repeated; "then, of course, you found him very interesting?" "There was not time to get interested in him," Mrs. Verdon answered.