He was gone. The door closed behind him, and Philippa sank into a chair with a sudden feeling of collapse. "Oh! oh!" she cried, and her hands went up to her head, and her breath grew short and strangled. All her pride and independence were swept aside by the remembrance of those last pregnant words: "Impossible for us both--little doubt in whose favour!" Suppose--oh, suppose, the Hermit complained to the committee, and she were served with a notice to quit! Suppose, with one set of bills barely settled, she were called upon to incur a second! With characteristic Charrington impetuosity she beheld ruin stalk towards her, and the faces of brothers and sisters filled with a pale reproach. Her head dropped forward on to the table; the tears rolled down her cheeks. She was just about to indulge in the luxury of a good cry, when suddenly there was a sound in the room, an exclamation of distress, and there stood the Hermit, picking up the hat which still lay on the table, and murmuring disconnected sentences of explanation. "I forgot my hat. The door was still open; I forgot to shut it. I turned back--_Crying_! I hope that I--that nothing that I have said--I should be most distressed--" Philippa stared at him helplessly. Her impulse was to deny the suggestion with scorn, but how was that possible with the tears rolling down her cheeks? She tried to control herself, to steady her voice sufficiently to reply, but the floodgates were open and could not be restrained. An agony of dread seized her lest she should humiliate herself still further, and, pointing to the door with childlike helplessness, she sobbed out a pitiful "Please, go--please, go!" and buried her face in her hands. The Hermit crept back to his room, but he could not work. Between himself and his books rose the vision of a girl's face, tremulous and tearful. The dark eyes looked into his with pathetic reproach. He called himself a brute and a coward for having dared to distress her. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. THE CULPRIT DISCOVERED. Acting on the rule of all good housewives, Philippa breathed no word of the unpleasant incident of the afternoon until dinner was over, and the workers had been fed and rested after their day's labours. Stephen, it is true, noted the pucker on her brow, and questioned her dumbly across the table; but she frowned a warning, and eagerly questioned the girls as to the success of their expedition. The circulars, it appeared, were promised in a week's time; and pending their arrival Hope had called on the vicar on the way home, and arranged to give her first performance to the members of his infant class on the following Monday. She had confided to him her anxiety to rehearse her entertainment, and he had laughingly promised to find her occupation for as many nights as she liked to give, either in his own parish or in those neighbouring ones which were even more in need of help.