Grace picked up the rest of her mail, lying still unopened, and went upstairs to her room with the proud determination to cry no more. She was quite sure she would not have cried over Tom's letter had all else been well. It was her interview with Miss Wharton that had hurt her so cruelly. Yet, with the reading of Tom's farewell message, deep down in her heart lurked a curiously uncomfortable sense of loss. It was as though for the first time in her life she had actually began to miss Tom. She had not expected fate to cut him off so sharply from her. She knew that her refusal to marry him had been the primary cause of his going away. Mrs. Gray would perhaps blame her. These expeditions were dangerous to say the least. More than one naturalist had died of fever or snakebite, or had been killed by savages. Suppose Tom were never to come back. Grace shuddered at the bare idea of such a calamity. And he did not intend to write to her, so she could only wonder as the days, weeks and months went by what had befallen him. She would never know. While she was sadly ruminating over Tom's unexpected exit from her little world, Emma Dean's brisk step sounded outside. The door swung open. Emma gave a soft exclamation as she saw the room in darkness. Pressing the button at the side of the door, she flooded the room with light, only to behold Grace standing in the middle of the floor, still wearing her outdoor wraps, an open letter in her hand. "Good gracious, Gracious, how you startled me! What is going on? Tell your worthless dog of a servant, what means this studied pose in the middle of the room in the dark? Not to mention posing in your hat and coat. And, yes," Emma drew nearer and peered into her friend's face with her kind, near-sighted eyes, "you've been crying. This will never do. Tell me the base varlet that hath caused these tears," she rumbled in a deep voice, "and be he lord of fifty realms I'll have his blood. 'Sdeath! Odds bodkins! Let me smite the villain. I could slay and slay, and be a teacher still. Provided the faculty didn't object, and I wasn't arrested," she ended practically. Grace's woe-be-gone face brightened at Emma's nonsense. "You always succeed in making me smile when I am the bluest of the blue," she said fondly. "I can't see why such strongly dramatic language as I used should make you laugh. It was really quite Shakespearian. You see I have 'the bard' on the brain. We have been taking up Elizabethan English in one of my classes, and once I become thoroughly saturated with Shakespearian verse I am likely to quote it on all occasions. Don't be surprised if I burst forth into blank verse at the table or any other public place. But here I've been running along like a talking machine when you are 'full fathom five' in the blues. Can't you tell your aged and estimable friend, Emma, what is troubling you?" "You were right, Emma. The summons came." Grace's voice was husky. "I've just had a session with Miss Wharton."