Rachel wrote to her father constantly, tenderly, solicitously; and Sir William, reading of her happiness, did not write back to tell her what those same days meant to him. For in London the sky was grey and heavy, and it was through a haze the colour of lead that he saw the years to come. The dark and cheerless winter had given place to a cold and cheerless spring. It was a rainy afternoon that the young couple returned to London; but the gloomy look of the streets outside did but enhance the brightness of the little house in Cosmo Place, Knightsbridge, with its open, square hall, in which a bright fire was blazing. Light and warmth shone everywhere. Rachel drew a long breath of satisfaction, then her eyes filled with tears. The very sight of London brought back the past. Could it be possible that her mother was not there to welcome her? She had thought her father might be awaiting her at Cosmo Place; but as he was not, she went off instantly to Prince's Gate. How big and lonely the house looked with its gaunt, ugly portico, its tall, narrow hall and endless stairs! The drawing-rooms were closed: Sir William was sitting in his study, a chess-board in front of him, on which he was working out a problem. Rachel was terribly perturbed at the change in his appearance--a something, she did not quite know in what it lay, that betokened some absolute change of outlook, of attitude. He had the listless, indifferent air of one who lets himself be drifted here and there rather than of one who moves securely along, strong enough to hold his own way in spite of any opposing elements. This fortnight of solitude, in which he had been face to face with his own life and his prospects, had suddenly, roughly, pitilessly graven on his face the lines that with other men successive experiences accumulate there gently and almost insensibly. He had taken a sudden leap into old age, as sometimes happens to men of his standing, who, as long as their life is smooth, uneventful, and prosperous, succeed in keeping an aspect of youth. Rachel's heart smote her at having left him; it reproached her with having known something like happiness in these days, and her old sense of troubled, anxious responsibility came back. She begged him to come and dine with them that evening. He demurred at first at making a third on their first night in their own house. Rachel protested, and overruled all his objections. She arrived at home just in time to dress for dinner, finding her husband surprised and somewhat discomfited at her prolonged absence. He had wanted to go proudly all over the house with her, and see their new domain. But as he saw her come up the stairs, he realised that black care had sprung up behind her again, that this was not the confiding, naively happy Rachel who had walked with him on the moors. "There you are!" he said. "I was just wondering what had become of you."