Christina's thoughts that evening often travelled to the silent valley, and to the beautiful woman with the anguished face, who had made so profound an impression upon her. Having tucked Baba safely into her cot, and heard the soft breathing which indicated that the blue-eyed baby was sleeping, Christina returned to the sitting-room, and drawing an armchair close to the fire, took up a novel in which she was deeply interested. But to-night her thoughts refused to follow the chequered fortunes of her heroine, and she no longer felt herself the least thrilled over the approaching climax of the story. The strange piece of real life into which she had been unwittingly plunged, interested her far more than any heroes or heroines of fiction, and she soon found herself with her book on her lap, and her own eyes fixed on the glowing coals, whilst her mind recapitulated all the events of the past few hours. "It is just like something entrancingly exciting in a melodrama," she reflected: "that lonely house, and the beautiful lady with the white face, and that silent valley." Remembering the silence in the valley, she shuddered a little, and wondered whether the lady of the unfathomable eyes ever minded the loneliness and silence; whether sometimes she was afraid--down there in the stillness of those sheltering woodlands. "I don't suppose I shall ever know any more about her," the girl's thoughts ran on, "but I should like to see her again. I never saw anybody like her in my life before, and she looked so sad; I wish I could have helped her more." From this point her reflections passed on to subsequent events of the day: to her own audacious stopping of the big motor; to the grey-eyed man whose failure to recognise her had given her just a tiny pang of regret; to the blue-eyed man, who had looked at her with an admiration to which she was quite unaccustomed. The memory of it brought a little flush to her face, even now that she sat alone in the firelight, and brought with it, too, a stab of resentment. "I don't think I quite like anybody to look at me like that," she thought; "and, after all, even if I am only a nurse, earning my own living--I--am still a woman." She drew up her head with a proud gesture characteristic of her, and then her reflections slipped away from the two men who had driven her to the doctor's house, and wandered on to the doctor himself. "I like _that_ man," she murmured emphatically, lifting her foot to push a protruding coal between the bars; "he wouldn't ever look at any woman as if he didn't respect her, and a woman might put her whole trust in him; so she might in--that other!" Rupert's face rose again before her mental vision, and she wondered as she had wondered many times that afternoon and evening, what was the pain that had carved such deep lines in his face, and brought so haunting a look of misery into his eyes.