My conductor had shut the door, and left me to my fate. I walked across the lawn, thinking to myself that under that hat was the face I had seen in Sir Roderick’s locket. No—as she suddenly looked up—it was not the same! What! that wild-rose, tender young face, with large grey eyes, the same as that saucy, imperious minx of the portrait? No relation, I could swear it. “Well, Hamlet!” Sir Roderick was quite warm in his welcome. “I didn’t look myself. No, unmistakably I did not. Overwork, of course; the foul atmosphere, too. Oh! I might say what I liked. Mine was a good hospital in its way, doubtless; but all the same, the atmosphere was a foul one. Else, why the disinfectants?” “You mentioned some unheard-of sum that you annually spend in disinfectants, and you can’t deny it,” he said. “Well, here you will have Nature’s disinfectants—pure air, and the scent of the pines and the heather and the hay. But I have not introduced you. Lilia, this is Dr. Paull.” The lovely girl, who wore white stuff with something red twisted round her waist, had been looking at me like children taken to the Zoo for the first time look at the wild beasts. She did not bow to me. I felt the blood come to my face. What on earth was she staring at? Then she turned to him, and said slowly: “_Doctor_ Paull?” It was not flattering, but I understood. “You are right—not _Doctor_,” I said. “There is much work before me before I can claim that title. I am only a medical student—” “Bosh!” interrupted Sir Roderick. “I know what Lilia means. I never have any young men here; she expected one of the old fogies. That’s it, isn’t it, child?” “Yes,” she said, nodding. “But—do you care for butterflies or beetles? No? Dear me! Oh, you are a botanist!” I hastened to disclaim the soft impeachments. “Then”—she knit her brow, and looked like a child making up an old woman’s face—“then you like geology?” I remembered Thomas’ mention of the visitors who went about with hammers, and responded gravely to my catechist. “I prefer to look at Nature and to ask no questions,” I said. Then there was some talk of the covered way from the road above, which my host informed me was built by his father. “He had some peculiar pleasure in startling people,” he said. “He used to give out that he was a social hermit; and although he lived down here much like other people live, would go about in town strangely dressed and behave oddly. My poor father was very eccentric.” He made the remark so innocently that I involuntarily glanced at his companion. She seemed unaware that there was anything _naïf_ in those words, and met my eyes with a deep, enquiring look. I have never seen such child eyes in a woman’s face.