"Bless my soul, Mrs Hallam! Oh! I beg your pardon," he stammered; "I thought--why, it must be Miss--and Mr Bayle, I--I really--I--" He could not speak. The tears stood in his eyes, and he stood there shaking away at both of Christie Bayle's hands for some moments before he became aware of Millicent Hallam's presence. "Only to think," he cried; "but come along." "We are going up to the doctor's," said Bayle. "Yes, yes, you shall; but pray come into my place--only for a minute. My wife will be so--so very pleased to see--Ah, my dear, how you have grown!" James Thickens had become aware that his eccentric behaviour was exciting attention, so he hurried the visitors up to his house. "Your people are quite well, Mrs Hallam," he said, hardly noticing that there was a curious distance in her manner towards him. "They're not expecting you, for the doctor was in the bank this morning, and he would have been sure to tell me." Mrs Hallam could not speak. She had felt so strengthened by tribulation, so hardened by trouble, that she had told herself that she could visit King's Castor and her old home without emotion; but as she alighted from the coach, the sight of the place and their house brought back so vividly the troubles of the past, and her misery as Robert Hallam's wife, that her knees trembled, and, but for Julia's arm, she could hardly have gone on. "Be brave," whispered a voice at her ear as Thickens prattled on. "This is not like you." She darted a grateful look through her veil at Christie Bayle, almost wondering at the same time that he should have noticed her emotion. Once she glanced back towards their old house; and her heart gave a throb as she saw there was a painted board upon the front, which could only mean one thing--that it was to let. All feeling of distance and coldness was chased away as Thickens opened the door and let them in to where a plump, pleasant-looking, little, elderly lady was sitting busily knitting, and so changed from the Miss Heathery they had all known that Bayle gazed at her wonderingly. The plump little body started up excitedly and then dropped back in her chair, turning white and then red. She gasped and pressed her hands upon her sides, and then looked up helplessly. "Why, don't you know who it is?" cried Thickens with boisterous hospitality in his tones. "Know? Yes, James, I know; but what a turn it has given me! My dear-- my darling!--oh, I--I--I--I am so glad to see you again." The little woman had recovered herself and had caught Mrs Hallam to her breast, rocking her to and fro and clinging to her so affectionately that Millicent's tears began to flow. Bayle turned aside, moved by the warmth of the faithful little woman's affection, when he felt a dig in his side from an elbow.