The September light waned. The room grew so dark that Bridget turned on an electric light beside her, and by the help of it stole a long look at Nelly, who was still standing by the window. Would grieving--would the loss of George--take Nelly's prettiness away? She had certainly lost flesh during the preceding weeks and days. Her little chin was very sharp, as Bridget saw it against the window, and her hair seemed to have parted with its waves and curls, and to be hanging limp about her ears. Bridget felt a pang of annoyance that anything should spoil Nelly's good looks. It was altogether unnecessary and absurd. Presently Nelly moved back towards her sister. 'I don't know how I shall get through the next fortnight,' she said in a low voice. 'I wonder what we had better do?' 'Well, we can't stay here,' said Bridget sharply. 'It's too expensive, though it is such a poky hole. We can find a lodging, I suppose, and feed ourselves. Unless of course we went back to Westmorland. Why can't you? They can always telegraph.' Nelly flushed. Her hand lying on the back of Bridget's chair shook. 'And if George sent for me,' she said, in the same low, strained voice, 'it would take eight hours longer to get to him than it would from here.' Bridget said nothing. In her heart of hearts she felt perfectly certain that George never would send. She rose and put down her needlework. 'I must go and post a letter downstairs. I'll ask the woman in the office if she knows anything about lodgings.' Nelly went back to her post by the window. Her mind was bruised between two conflicting feelings--a dumb longing for someone to caress and comfort her, someone who would meet her pain with a bearing less hard and wooden than Bridget's--and at the same time, a passionate shrinking from the bare idea of comfort and sympathy, as something not to be endured. She had had a kind letter from Sir William Farrell that morning. He had spoken of being soon in London. But she did not know that she could bear to see him--unless he could help--get something _done!_ Bridget descended to the ground floor, and had a conversation with the young lady in the office, which threw no light at all on the question of lodgings. The young lady in question seemed to be patting and pinning up her back hair all the time, besides carrying on another conversation with a second young lady in the background. Bridget was disgusted with her and was just going upstairs again, when the very shabby and partly deformed hall porter informed her that someone--a gentleman--was waiting to see her in the drawing-room. A gentleman? Bridget hastened to the small and stuffy drawing-room, where the hall porter had just turned on the light, and there beheld a tall bearded man pacing up and down, who turned abruptly as she entered. 'How is she? Is there any news?' Sir William Farrell hurriedly shook her offered hand, frowning a little at the sister who always seemed to him inadequate and ill-mannered.