She fixed her candid gaze full upon him. She had known him well for years, and not only did she know him, but, rough character as he was, she liked and respected him. Looking him squarely in the face she saw at once that he was speaking the truth. He was not drunk. He was ill,--very ill. The strained anguish on his features proved it. "Hadn't you better come inside the bar and sit down?" she suggested, in a low tone. "No, thanks--I'd rather not. I'll stand just here." She gave him the brandy he had asked for. He sipped it slowly, and, pushing his cap further off his brows, turned his dark eyes, full of smouldering fire, upon Lord Wrotham and his friend, both of whom had succeeded in getting up a little conversation with the hostess's younger daughter, the girl named Grace. Her sister, Elizabeth, put down her needlework, and watched Tom with sudden solicitude. An instinctive dislike of Lord Wrotham and his companion caused her to avoid looking their way, though she heard every word they were saying,--and her interest became centred on the handsome gypsy, whose pallid features and terrible expression filled her with a vague alarm. "It would be awfully jolly of you if you'd come for a spin in my motor," said his lordship, twirling his sandy moustache and conveying a would-be amorous twinkle into his small brown-green eyes for the benefit of the girl he was ogling. "Beastly bore having a break-down, but it's nothing serious--half a day's work will put it all right, and if you and your sister would like a turn before we go on from here, I shall be charmed. We can't do the record business now--not this time,--so it doesn't matter how long we linger in this delightful spot." "Especially in such delightful company!" added his friend, Brookfield. "I'm going to take a photograph of this house to-morrow, and perhaps"--here he smiled complacently--"perhaps Miss Grace and Miss Elizabeth will consent to come into the picture?" "Ya-as--ya-as!--oh do!" drawled Wrotham. "Of course they will! _You_ will, I'm sure, Miss Grace! This gentleman, Mr. Brookfield, has got nearly all the pictorials under his thumb, and he'll put your portrait in them as 'The Beauty of Somerset,' won't you, Brookfield?" Brookfield laughed, a pleased laugh of conscious power. "Of course I will," he said. "You have only to express the wish and the thing is done!" Wrotham twirled his moustache again. "Awful fun having a friend on the press, don't-cher-know!" he went on. "I get all my lady acquaintances into the papers,--makes 'em famous in a day! The women I like are made to look beautiful, and those I don't like are turned into frights--positive old horrors, give you my life! Easily done, you know!--touch up a negative whichever way you fancy, and there you are!" The girl Grace lifted her eyes,--very pretty sparkling eyes they were,--and regarded him with a mutinous air of contempt. "It must be 'awfully' amusing!" she said sarcastically.