"It was very kind of you to come, Miss Coryston." She pushed forward a chair. "Won't you sit down? I'm ashamed of this room. I apologize for it." She looked round it with a gesture of weary disgust, and then at Marcia, who stood in flushed agitation, the heavy cloak she had worn in the motor falling back from her shoulders and her white dress, the blue motor veil framing the brilliance of her eyes and cheeks. "I musn't sit down, thank you--I can't stay long," said the girl, hurriedly. "Will you tell me why you sent for me? I came at once. But my mother, when she comes home, will wonder where I am." Without answering immediately, Mrs. Betts moved to the window, and looked out into the darkening landscape, and the trees already bending to the gusts which precede the storm. "Did you see my husband as you came?" she asked, turning slightly. "Yes. He was carrying something. He saw me, but I don't think he knew who I was." "He never came home last night at all," said Mrs. Betts, looking away again out of the window. "He wandered about the fields and the sheds all night. I looked out just as it was getting light, and saw him walking about among the wheat plots, sometimes stopping to look, and sometimes making a note in his pocket-book, as he does when he's going his rounds. And at four o'clock, when I looked again, he was coming out of the cattle-shed, with something in his hand, which he took into the laboratory. I saw him unlock the door of the laboratory and I bent out of my window, and tried to call him. But he never looked my way, and he stayed there till the sun was up. Then I saw him again outside, and I went out and brought him in. But he wouldn't take any rest even then. He went into the office and began to write. I took him some tea, and then--" The speaker's white face quivered for the first time. She came to Marcia and laid both hands on the girl's arm. "He told me he was losing his memory and his mind. He thought he had never quite got over his illness before he went to Colwyn Bay--and now it was this trouble which had done for him. He had told Mr. Edward he would go to Canada--but he knew he never should. They wouldn't want a man so broken up. He could never begin any new work--his life was all in this place. So then--" The tears began quietly to overflow the large blue eyes looking into Marcia's. Mrs. Betts took no notice of them. They fell on the bosom of her dress; and presently Marcia timidly put up her own handkerchief, and wiped them away, unheeded.