But one night--it was the night before they were to start--he almost betrayed himself. "To-morrow you will have escaped the piano and violin, Tommy's squeals and the yowling of the cats, the manifold charms of Beaumont Buildings, and the picturesque cabbages of the costers' barrows, Miss Lorton. I wonder whether you will ever come back?" "Why, of course," said Nell, smiling. "Dick is not going to spend the remainder of his life at Anglemere. Oh, yes; we shall be back almost before you have missed us, Mr. Falconer." "Think so?" he said, smiling, too, but with a strange look in his eyes, and a tremulous quiver of the thin and too-red lips. "Then you will have to be back in a very few minutes after the cab has left the door. No; somehow I fancy that Beaumont Buildings is seeing the last of you. Tommy must share my dread, for he howled with more than his accustomed vehemence when he said 'Good-by' just now." "That was because you said I ought not to kiss him, because he was so dirty," said Nell. "Poor little Tommy! Yes, I think he'll miss me!" "It's not improbable," he said, in his ironical way. "I wish I were seven years old, with a smudgy face and a perpetual sniff. Who knows! You might have some pity to spare for me." Nell laughed with the unconscious heartlessness of the woman who does not suspect that the man she is laughing at loves her better than life itself. "Oh, I hope you will miss us, too," she said. "But you will be freer to get on with your work. I'm afraid Dick--and I, too!--have often interrupted you and interfered with your composing. You must set at the cantata while we are away, and have it finished for us to hear when we come back. And, Mr. Falconer, you will take care of yourself, won't you? You are so careless, you know--about going out in the rain and at night without an umbrella or overcoat. I heard you coughing last night." "Did you?" he said. "I hope I didn't keep you awake! I kept my head under the bedclothes as much as I could! Yes, I'll take care, though I don't think it matters very much." Nell looked up at him, startled and rather shocked. "Why do you say that?" she said reproachfully. "Do you think that Dick--and I--wouldn't be sorry if you were ill?" "Yes," he said, smiling gravely, "you would be sorry. So you would be if Tommy got the measles, or the black cat opposite were to slip off the tiles and break its neck, or Giles came home sober enough one night to kill his wife. There! I've hurt you! I didn't mean to! It's sheer cussedness on my part, and I'm an ill-conditioned cur to say a word." Then suddenly the smile vanished, and his misery showed itself in his dark eyes. "Ah! can't you see what your going means to me--can't you see?" He caught his emotion by the throat and checked it. "That--that I shall miss you--and Dick; that I shan't have any one to come to with my cantata and my cough. There's Dick calling, and good-by. I--I shall be out at a music lesson when you start to-morrow."