"There is nothing more to tell," she replied. "She was dying when I met her. I saw it--in her eyes. She could not have lived. She went away and died. She--I----" John Baird heard a slight sharp choking sound in her throat. "There!" she said presently, "I don't like to talk about it. I am too emotional for my years. Go to Mrs. Stornaway. She is looking for you." He got up and turned and left her without speaking, and a few minutes later, when Mrs. Stornaway wanted him to give an account of his interview with the Pope, she was surprised to see him approaching her from the door as if he had been out of the room. His story of the interview with the Pope was very interesting, and he was more "brilliant" than ever during the remainder of the evening, but when the last guest had departed, followed by Mrs. Stornaway to the threshold, that lady, on her return to the parlour, found him standing by the mantel looking at the fire with so profoundly wearied an air, that she uttered an exclamation. "Why," she said, "you look tired, I must say. But everything went off splendidly and I never saw you so brilliant." "Thank you," he answered. "I've just been saying," with renewed spirit of admiration, "that your crossing with that Latimer has quite brought him into notice. It will be a good thing for him. I heard several people speak of him to-night and say how kind it was of you to take him up." Baird stirred uneasily. "I should not like to have that tone taken," he said. "Why should I patronise him? We shall be friends--if he will allow it." He spoke with so much heat and impatience that Mrs. Stornaway listened with a discomfited stare. "But nobody knows anything about them," she said. "They're quite ordinary people. They live in Bank Street." "That may settle the matter for Willowfield," said Baird, "but it does not settle it for me. We are to be friends, and Willowfield must understand that." And such was the decision of his tone that Mrs. Stornaway did not recover herself and was still staring after him in a bewildered fashion when he went upstairs. "But it's just like him," she remarked, rather weakly to the room's emptiness. "That's always the way with people of genius and--and--_mind_. They're always humble." CHAPTER XIV She had renewed opportunity for remarking upon the generous humility the next morning when he left the house with the intention of paying his visit to Bank Street. "He's actually going," she said. "Well, I must say again it's just like him. There are very few men in his position who would think it worth while, but he treats everybody with just as much consideration as if--as if he was nobody."