Martha shook her head and went fumbling back to bed again; and being a conscientious servant she said nothing about it for fear of frightening the old lady.

About a fortnight later, Rhoda Vivian, sailing down the corridor, came upon the little arithmetic teacher all sick and tremulous, leaning up against the hot-water pipes beside a pile of exercise-books.  The sweat streamed from her sallow forehead, and her face was white and drawn.  She could give no rational account of herself, but offered two hypotheses as equally satisfactory; either she had taken a bad chill, or else the hot air from the water-pipes had turned her faint.  Rhoda picked up the pile of exercise-books and led her into the dressing-room, and Miss Quincey was docile and ridiculously grateful.  She was glad that Miss Vivian was going to take her home.  She even smiled her little pinched smile and pressed Rhoda’s hand as she said, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”  Rhoda would have given anything to be able to return the pressure and the sentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately sincere.  She was sorry for Miss Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from the bond of friendship.  So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots, and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button.  The touch of Miss Quincey’s clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, and she could have wept over the unutterable pathos of her hat.  In form and substance it was a rock, beaten by the weather; its limp ribbons clung to it like seaweed washed up and abandoned by the tide.  When Miss Quincey’s head was inside it the hat seemed to become one with Miss Quincey; you could not conceive anything more melancholy and forlorn.  Rhoda was beautifully attired in pale grey cloth.  Rhoda wore golden sables about her throat, and a big black Gainsborough hat on the top of her head, a hat that Miss Quincey would have thought a little daring and theatrical on anybody else; but Rhoda wore it and looked like a Puritan princess.  Rhoda’s clothes were enough to show that she was a woman for whom a profession is a superfluity, a luxury.

Rhoda sent for a hansom, and having left Miss Quincey at her home went off in search of a doctor.  She had insisted on a doctor, in spite of Miss Quincey’s protestations.  After exploring a dozen dingy streets and conceiving a deep disgust for Camden Town, she walked back to find her man in the neighbourhood of St. Sidwell’s.

CHAPTER IV

Bastian Cautley, M.D.

It was half-past five and Dr. Bastian Cautley had put on his house jacket, loosened his waistcoat, settled down by his library fire with a pipe and a book, and was thanking Heaven that for once he had an hour to himself between his afternoon round and his time for consultation.  He had been working hard ever since nine o’clock in the morning; but now nobody could have looked more superlatively lazy than Bastian