"Poor creature!" said Caroline to herself. She stole softly away, but the room upstairs had such a desolate look, she could not stay in it; so, as sleep was impossible now, she dressed quickly, and went back to Mrs. Lancing's room still in the same soft way. "I may be of some use," she said. She sat in the chair by the fire and she watched the bed. It gave her a sense of extraordinary gladness to see those three so closely together; in this moment she seemed to share in their union; she ceased to be a stranger. CHAPTER IX Although he had both telegraphed and written to ask for some statement concerning Caroline Graniger from his mother, Rupert Haverford, of course, never expected to receive a prompt answer; indeed, he was quite prepared to have no answer at all. He left orders that all his letters were to be forwarded to him whilst he was in the north, and Caroline's little epistle travelled thither with the rest of his enormous correspondence. It would have been very difficult for Haverford to have described why he objected to the arrangement that had been entered into between Mrs. Lancing and Caroline Graniger. The girl's own argument to herself in favour of what she had done was a very sound one. Indeed, under the circumstances, most people would have regarded the matter as being both lucky and satisfactory. But Rupert shared Mrs. Brenton's view about things done in haste; that for the first point; the second was that, as he had put himself out in a certain measure to make arrangements for Miss Graniger, he considered that he should have been consulted before she had made any definite plans. To find, therefore, that she had already assumed an independent attitude, and had taken herself and her immediate future out of his hands, annoyed him. There are very few men who really appreciate the spirit of independence in women, and Rupert Haverford was very much behind the times in his views concerning the way in which women were swarming into the world as bread-winners and wage-earners. He made no haste to reply to Caroline's letter. As usual, he found much to occupy him when he arrived at that dirty, smoky, northern town. He confessed to himself that he was glad to be away from London again even for a little while; glad to dissociate his thoughts from that element of his life that belonged to the world in which Camilla Lancing lived. Not that he expected to be able to put her out of his thoughts altogether, for even in the dull, prosaic, unlovely surroundings of the factory, remembrance of this woman haunted him in so tangible a way that at times he could almost have imagined she was close beside him. And on this occasion he carried with him new matter for thought where Camilla was concerned. A new element had crept into his heart. If he shut his eyes he could see with painful distinctness Camilla floating round that large room held in the arms of another man.