Delia said goodnight, and went away. But she did think of her father--with a curious intensity. And when she fell fitfully asleep, she dreamt that she saw him standing beside her in some open foreign place, and that he looked at her in silence, steadily and coldly. And she stretched out her hands, in a rush of grief--"Kiss me, father! I was unkind--horribly--horribly unkind!" With the pain of it, she woke suddenly and the visualising sense seemed still to perceive in the darkness the white head and soldierly form. She half rose, gasping. Then, as though a photographic shutter were let down, the image passed from the brain, and she lay with heaving breast, trying to find her way back into what we call reality. But it was a reality even more wretched than those recollections to which her dream had recalled her. For it was held and possessed by Winnington, and now by the threatening vision of Monk Lawrence, spectral amid the red ruin of fire. She had stopped the motor that day at the foot of the hill on which the house stood, and using Winnington's name, had made a call on the cripple child. Daunt had received her with a somewhat gruff civility, and was not communicative about the house and its defence. But she gathered--without herself broaching the subject--that he was scornfully confident of his power to protect it against "them creeping women," and she had come home comforted. The cripple child had clung to her silently; and on coming away, Delia had felt a small wet kiss upon her hand. A touching creature!--with her wide blue eyes, and delicate drawn face. It was feared that another abscess might be developing in the little hip, where for a time disease had been quiescent. * * * * * On Monday morning the doctors came early. They gave a favourable verdict, and Delia at once decided on an afternoon train. All the morning, Lady Tonbridge hovered round her, loth to take her own departure, and trying every now and then to re-open the subject of London, to make the girl promise to send for her--to consult Winnington, if any trouble arose. But Delia would not allow any discussion. "I shall be with Gertrude--she'll tell me what to do," was all she would say. Lady Tonbridge was dropped at her own door by Delia, on her way to the station. Nora was there to welcome her, but not all their joy in recovering each other, could repair Madeleine's cheerfulness. She stood, looking after the retreating car with such a face that Nora exclaimed-- "Mother, what _is_ the matter!" "I'm watching the tumbril out of sight," said Lady Tonbridge incoherently. "Shall we ever see her again?" That, however, was someone else's affair.