Rupert would have found it difficult to explain why, on the following afternoon, his steps again turned towards Mrs. Nairne's house, and why he assured himself, that it would be kind to Cicely to go to see Baba again, and take the latest tidings of the child back to her mother. He only knew that he had a great desire to sit quietly in that firelit room again, to feel the sense of peace and home-like tranquillity that seemed to hover about it; he only felt that in some inexplicable fashion Baba's new nurse--the girl with the sweet eyes and gentle voice--rested him, that her simplicity, and some child-like quality in her, soothed the pain that tore at his heart. Women had played no part in his life, until one woman had played an overmastering one; and all that his passionate adoration of Margaret Stanforth had cost, and was costing, him, gave an added charm to a nature devoid of all subtlety, simple and serene. Across the stretch of years between them, he regarded Christina as little more than a child, but it is often from a child's hands that the passion-tossed, world-weary soul can find most comfort; and as Mernside for the second time sat in the old-fashioned sitting-room, and had tea with Christina and her small charge, he felt that in some indefinable fashion, the girl's hands were unconsciously smoothing away some of the misery that chafed his soul. She showed no traces of her embarrassment of the previous day. Night had brought its own counsels, and she had determined not to disclose her identity to Mernside. "After all," she reflected philosophically, "I didn't do anything wrong--only something silly--and it is all over now. Probably he has forgotten all about the stupid girl who wrote him that letter, and anyhow, he doesn't think about me at all, excepting as Baba's nurse, so it would be foolish to make a fuss."