Millie had spoken with a noticeable distance in her manner; and she had not given him her hand. With her back towards the light she had allowed very little of her expression to be visible to her visitor. When tea was brought in, however, she sat between the fireplace and the window, and the light fell upon her. Callon sat opposite to her. "At last I know that I am at home again," he said, with a smile. Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice, although there was no third person in the room. He knew the value of such tricks. "I have looked forward during these eighteen months so very much to seeing you again." Millie's face coloured, but it was with anger rather than pleasure. There was a hard look upon her face; her eyes blamed him. "Yet you went away without a word to me," she said. "You did not come to see me before you went, you never hinted you were going." "You thought it unkind?" "It was unkind," said Millie. "But I wrote to you. I have written often." "In no letter have you told me why you went away," said Millie. "You missed me when I went, then?" Millie shrugged her shoulders. "Well, I had seen a good deal of you. I missed--I missed--something," she said. Callon drank his tea and set down his cup. "I have come to tell you why I went away without a word. I never mentioned the reason in my letters; I meant to tell you it with my lips. I did not _go_ away, I was _sent_ away." Millie was perplexed. "Sent away?" she repeated. "I understood, from what you wrote, that you accepted a post from Mr. Mudge?" "I had to accept it," said Callon. "It was forced on me. Mudge was only the instrument to get me out of the way." "Who sent you away, then?" asked Millie. "A friend of yours--Miss Pamela Mardale." Millie Stretton leaned back in her chair. "Pamela!" she cried incredulously. "Pamela sent you away! Why?" "Because she thought that I was seeing too much of you."