The yellow gloom fell like a pall on all that was bright and beautiful and desirable. He longed to go back to the country; above all, he longed to see her again, and quickly. CHAPTER III When he reached his mother's house in Kensington, Rupert Haverford was met with the information that Mrs. Baynhurst had left town the preceding day. The house was all shut up, and the servant who opened the door to him wore no apron or cap. He passed into the hall thoroughly vexed. Of course by this time he ought to have been well prepared for any startling move on the part of his mother, who never by any chance did those things that were expected of her, or, indeed, anything that she had announced she intended doing. He put the parlourmaid through a cross-examination. "I came up from the country on purpose," he said to her, naturally irritated. "I understood from a letter that was sent on from my house that my mother had had an accident, and that she was anything but well!" "No more she is, sir," said the maid. "Dr. Mortlock, he was quite angry when he come here this morning and found Mrs. Baynhurst gone; but there was a letter come yesterday from Mr. Cuthbert, saying as he was ill in Paris, and the mistress she fussed herself into a fever, and wouldn't rest satisfied, so she left last night. She wasn't no more fit to travel than this doormat, sir. You see, there was all but a smash up with the brougham." Rupert Haverford was frowning sharply. "Who is with my mother?" he asked. "She's took Stebbings, her maid that is, sir, but not Miss Graniger. Most probable she'll have to join Mrs. Baynhurst in a day or two." The maid rambled on loquaciously, and Rupert Haverford quickly gathered that his mother must have had a nasty shock, as her carriage had apparently just escaped collision with a runaway cab. She was not a nervous or a timid woman, far from it; but of late she had been in anything but good health, and this journey to Paris appeared to Haverford not merely an altogether needless fatigue, but a very foolish undertaking on her part. In all probability his half-brother's serious illness would signify nothing more than an ordinary cold. It was so typical of Cuthbert Baynhurst to write in a sensational way about himself; equally typical of their mother to take immediate alarm when any such news reached her. It relieved Rupert Haverford to be angry with his half-brother now. He had made it a principle never to be angry with his mother. It was so useless. She was a strange creature was Rupert's mother. In a sense they were nothing more than acquaintances, for she had left his father when he had been a baby of a few months. Octavia Marling had married John Haverford in a hurry, and had regretted the haste almost immediately.