The Towers seemed very quiet when the two girls had gone; and its master would have felt very lonely had it not been for the kind attention of Lady Marjorie Stonor, who drove over to see him every day--sometimes twice in the day. He looked forward with eagerness to her coming, for she made a delightful companion; and being gifted with more than the average amount of tact, knew exactly how to adapt her mood to his. She could be loquacious or silent, gay or grave, flippant or thoughtful; it was all one to her so long as she amused and entertained the invalid. Their friendship had ripened considerably since the fire. They had slipped into the habit of calling each other by their first names; he never thought of prefixing her title now. Sometimes, when she arranged the cushions in his chair--which, by the way, was not at all necessary, even if he did carry his arm in a sling--she dropped a light butterfly kiss on his forehead; and then smiled at him naïvely, like a child who has been guilty of some particularly audacious trick. And everything she did, came so naturally and sweetly from her, that there seemed nothing extraordinary in her guileless intimacy towards him. Herbert Karne told himself over and over again, that for the sake of his honour and her happiness he ought to repel her advances, as he had done before. He knew that he and she were drifting towards a rock marked _dangerous_, and that shipwreck would inevitably ensue. He knew it; but he was weakened by illness: he seemed to have lost all his power of resistance. What is a man to do when a pretty woman--and a good woman--looks love at him out of baby blue eyes, and practises all the artless wiles of her sex to enslave him? When Lady Marjorie chose to be charming, she was very charming indeed. It would have needed a veritable misanthropist to have withstood her, when once she had made up her mind to conquer. And so the days sped on--days full of poetry, romance, and love-dreams; and one afternoon the climax came. They were having a _tête-à-tête_ tea in the drawing-room, when, as it happened, Reggie Stannard dropped in to inquire how the artist was going on. In the hall he was waylaid by young Bobbie Stonor, who wished to ask his advice about a peg-top he was endeavouring to spin. Bobbie was in the habit of roaming about the house when his mother visited Mr. Karne, for the lore of love had no interest for him. In the course of conversation, he referred to the new papa he was going to have; and, on being questioned, said that his nurse had told him that Mr. Karne would soon be his papa. So Stannard came to the conclusion that Herbert Karne must be engaged to Lady Marjorie Stonor, a conviction which was deepened when he entered the drawing-room to find the two sitting opposite each other at a small tea-table with their faces close together, conversing in low tones.