"I beg your pardon, sir, but I have been up twice already and received no answer," he said, his manner correct and respectful as ever, but his face wearing, for once, an expression of quite human solicitude--or was it curiosity? "I spoke to Mr. Renshaw and Mr. Lowndes, and they considered it advisable that I should enter, sir. Mr. Renshaw and Mr. Lowndes felt, with me, not quite comfortable, sir, knowing your habit of early rising." Watkins set down the tray carefully, turning out the corners of the fine napkin which covered it. "Your tea, your letters, sir," he added, and then paused. Laurence tried to rouse himself. Shipboard and the pounding engines were a delusion clearly. But was the night of sweet converse, and the flitting away of a rose-clad, slender figure at the first flush of dawn, a delusion likewise? "Oh yes, thanks, Watkins, I am all right," he said absently. "I've slept late, have I? What time is it?" "Between ten minutes and a quarter past eleven when I passed through the hall," the man answered. "Any orders for the stables, sir?" Laurence was tearing open his letters. One was addressed in his wife's large and elaborate hand. Laughing at her, one day before their marriage, he had declared that did she possess half the amount of character suggested by these opulent hieroglyphics, there would positively be no getting to the end of it, so that his work clearly was cut out for him for the rest of his natural life. Now the sight of that handwriting--though he had possibly ceased to regard it as a perfectly trustworthy index to its writer's personality--affected him with a movement of vague self-reproach. For, as sleep left him, Laurence entertained less and less doubt of the actuality of the existence of his rose-clad fairy-lady; or of the fact that he had spent hours with her--hours, blameless it is true, yet beautiful beyond all remembered hours of his experience. And though he had done no wrong, yet the very beauty of those hours--since she had not shared it--constituted a certain subtle, subjective infidelity towards his wife. This pricked his conscience the more, that he perceived Virginia must have written to him by the very next mail, but three days after he had sailed. And that was rather charming and thoughtful of her, for she had innumerable engagements claiming her time and attention, and was by no means addicted to anxiety regarding the absent. "Why should she worry," as she remarked at parting, "everybody was always crossing now, and you hardly ever heard of any one not getting to the other side safely enough." Therefore it seemed to Laurence it would be a duty, perhaps also a little salve to his conscience, to do something pleasing--however remotely--to Virginia. He had an order for the stables. He would ride over to luncheon with her friend and admirer, Mrs. Bellingham, at Bishop's Pudbury.