"Say you'll be stayed till we come in," pleaded Betty. Baby kept them waiting while she solemnly unfolded a piece of crumpled paper; from this she extracted a crushed-looking object that once had been a chocolate drop, and before Caroline could intervene she had pressed this upon Haverford. He accepted the gift with gratitude, and carried it upstairs to show it with pride to Baby's mother. "Let me tell you," said Camilla, as she gave him her hand without rising, "that that is a sign that you are in very great favour. I thought I was the only person with whom Babsy shared the things she was eating. She is so fond of eating, dear little soul. Just like me. Pull up that chair and be sociable. Do you know that it is years since I saw you? Where _have_ you been? I begin to think there is something mysterious about these journeys to the north." It was an attempt at her usual pretty, light-hearted manner, but only an attempt. Haverford did not pull up the chair; he stood by the fire and looked down at her. Strangely enough he felt quite at his ease with her to-day. He had drawn off the glove that had the chocolate drop sticking to it, and Camilla noticed, not for the first time, what a fine hand he had. Though it was brown, and had been trained to such hard work, there was a charm about it. A hand can be so significant. With a sudden shiver she remembered the flat, coarse, cruel finger-tips of Samuel Broxbourne. There was something inviting, something pleasant about the look of Rupert Haverford's hand. "Do sit down," she said suddenly; and there was a little nervous tone in her voice. Instead of obeying her he put a question to her. "What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked. She pretended to misunderstand him. "I told Caroline I was sure I was not fit to be seen to-day;" then she shrugged her shoulders. "Late hours, my dear friend. The result of all the silly, stupid things that I know you want to denounce from the housetop. I came home very late last night," she said, after a little pause. "I played cards, and I lost a lot!... And then I found some tiresome letters waiting for me, and so"--she shrugged her shoulders a second time--"I had a bad night, and to-day, of course, I look a wreck." "I think you ought to see a doctor," said Rupert Haverford. Camilla moved impatiently in her chair. "How unoriginal a man is! You are all alike," she said. "You imagine that as soon as a doctor has scribbled something on a paper, and the chemist has sent in a neat little white packet, and an equally neat little bill, then everything must be all right! Shakespeare was a man, but he knew things better than most of you do. He knew, for instance, that all the doctors in the world cannot do any good when the mind is ill." There was a pause, in which Camilla made a strange discovery. She found she could hear her own heart beat quite plainly. Was it chance or Providence that had sent this man to her now?