As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive fashion of Lymchurch. "'E gave me a letter for you," said the child, and Rosamund took it, giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table. "Excuse me," she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses. She read the letter, frowned, read it again. "Constance, you might get the coffee." Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest. "This is _your_ doing," she said with a concentrated fury that brought him to his feet facing her. "Why did you come and meddle! You've told him I was rich--the very thing I didn't mean him to know till--till he couldn't help himself. You've spoilt everything! And now he's gone--and he'll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this some day. You will, if there's any justice in the world!" He looked as though he suffered for it even now, but when he spoke his voice was equable. "I am extremely sorry," he said, "but after all, there's very little harm done. You should have warned me that you meant to play a comedy, and I would have taken any part you assigned me. However, you've succeeded. He evidently 'loves you for yourself alone.' Write and tell him to come back: he'll come." "How little you know him," she said, "after all these years! Even I know him better than that. That was why I pretended not to be rich. Directly I knew about the money I made up my mind to find him and try if I could make him care. I know it sounds horrid; I don't mind, it's true. And I had done it; and then you came. Oh, I hope I shall never see you again! I will never speak to you again! No, I don't mean that----" She hid her face in her hands. "Rosamund, try to forgive me. I didn't know, I couldn't know. I will bring him back to you--I swear it! Only trust me." "You can't," she said; "it's all over." "Let me tell you something. If you hadn't had this money--but if you hadn't had this money I should never have seen you. But I have thought of nothing but you ever since that day you came to the Temple. I don't tell you this to annoy you, only to show you that I would do anything in the world to prevent you from being unhappy. Forgive me, dear! Oh, forgive me!" "It's no good," she said; but she gave him her hand. When Constance Grant came back with the coffee, she found Mr Guillemot alone looking out of the window at the sunflowers and the hollyhocks. "What is the matter?" she asked. "I've made a fool of myself," he said, forgetting, as he looked at her kind eyes, that three hours ago she was only a name to him. "Could I do anything?" "You're her friend," he said. "Miss Grant, I'm going down to the sea, if you could come down with me and let me talk--but I've no right to bother you."