Had it not been for the pressure put upon her by Mr. and Mrs. Wingate, Hermia would have returned to Ashdown by an early train next day, so disheartened was she by the result of her interview with Richard Varrel. In deference, however, to the wishes of her friends, she agreed to extend her stay for three days longer. She had quite made up her mind that she had seen the last of Varrel; that his path and hers would never cross each other again. Yet all the while an indefinable sense of something still to come held her in her own despite. It could hardly be called a premonition, so shadowy and elusive was it, and yet it so impressed her that she could not hear a knock at the door without holding her breath to listen for a summons, for which her reason told her she might wait till the last day of her life, and always might be in vain. However, strangely enough, the summons did come, and that just forty-eight hours after she had parted from Varrel. Before leaving him she had laid a card on the table. "Here is my address, in case you should at any time be desirous of communicating with me," she had said. His only answer had been a cynical smile. Having no cards of her own, she had pencilled her Ashdown address on the back of one of Mrs. Wingate's cards, which had that lady's address on the other side, and it was there the messenger came in search of her. A man of the name of Richard Varrel, who was lying in St. Gregory's Hospital in a very critical state, earnestly entreated that Miss Rivers would go to him with the least possible delay, as he had something of extreme importance to communicate to her. Such was the message that now reached Hermia. A cab was at once ordered, and ten minutes later she was on her way to the Hospital, accompanied, as before, by Mr. Wingate.