"She and Lena must be friends; our children ought to be friends. And you and I," she said, with deeper feeling in her voice, "must not lose sight of each other again." "Of course not," he answered, and this time he managed to look at her with his old smile, in which there had always been a charm. It went to her heart and made her a natural woman. With something like a sigh she watched him as he descended the stairs. "I could love him now," she thought, "and go to the devil for him too, with all the pleasure in the world. But he's so abominably good that he will probably be faithful to his farmer woman till the breath is out of his body." "Well, would you like to go and stay there some day?" Mr. Vincent asked Margaret. "No," she answered, quickly, and then she added, reluctantly, and because she couldn't help it; "I don't know why it is, father, but I feel as if I never wanted to go there again." "That's right," he said. What the answer meant she didn't quite understand, but she rubbed her shoulder against his in sheer sympathy. A hansom gives little scope for variety in caresses, but this did well enough. IX At ten o'clock next morning Tom Carringford appeared at the Langham. "Miss Vincent said you were staying here, so I made bold to come," he explained, with a boyish frankness that immediately won over Mr. Vincent. "Please forgive me, and don't think it awfully cool of me to come so early. I was afraid I should miss you if I waited." "I'm very glad to see you," Mr. Vincent said. "I knew your father well." And in a moment Tom was quite at his ease. "What did you think of 'King John?'" he asked Margaret. "It was splendid; and a theatre is a wonderful place. How can people call it wicked?" "Well, they don't," he laughed, "unless they are idiots, then they do, perhaps," at which she laughed too, and thought of Hannah. "I expect the scenes with Arthur gave you a few bad moments, didn't they?" he asked. "She wept," her father said, evidently amused at the recollection. "That's all right." Tom beamed with satisfaction. She was a nice girl, he thought, so of course she wept; she ought to weep at seeing that sort of thing for the first time. Then he turned to Mr. Vincent. "My father would be glad to think I had seen you at last," he said; "he often wondered why you never turned up." "I have not turned up anywhere for more than five-and-twenty years," Mr. Vincent answered. "If I had he would have seen me." He was looking at Tom with downright pleasure, at his six feet of growth and broad shoulders, at his frank face and clear blue eyes. This was the sort of boy that a man would like to have for a son, he thought; and then, after a moment's characteristic hesitation, he said: "Stringer told us that you went to Hindhead sometimes; perhaps one day you would get over and see us?" "Should like it," said Tom, heartily. "You have left Oxford, of course?" "Oh yes, last year." "Any ambitions?"