None, none.  And yet he felt a good deal as if a thunderbolt had fallen from the skies at his feet, and it was more or less of a shock to him.

Presently he rang his bell.

“Who comes next, Soames?”

“Lady Rutherven, Sir John, but—­but a lady who has no appointment has been waiting for more than an hour, and I thought perhaps you would see her first.  She seems very ill.”

“Show her in!”

A second later the door swung open again and Soames announced: 

“Miss Blackall!”

Sir John started, but recovered himself in the next instant.

“Take a seat, madam.”

He waved her to a chair and for several minutes they looked at each other without speaking.  The woman was the first to break the silence.

“I have come back,” she said with a nervous laugh.  “I am ill; I thought you might try to cure me.”

She had seated herself, but he remained standing.

What a handsome woman she had become, he was thinking, and how expensively dressed!  There was something strange in the very familiarity of the countenance presented to him.  It had altered much from what he remembered it, but curiously enough he remembered it the more vividly because of that very alteration.

“What is your trouble?” he asked huskily—­“Why have you consulted—­me?”

“It is my lungs.  I don’t know—­let us call it a whim.  I thought you would do me good if anyone could.”  She paused a second:  “You used to be my husband once.”

“Once!  Well, I am willing to be your doctor.”

“I suppose you would do your best for a dog if it were dying, wouldn’t you? though you might not care if it recovered.”

“I have a very faithful dog,” he said significantly.

Bella winced.

“Dogs ask so little for their love.  Oh, I didn’t come here without a struggle.  And I knew you would speak like this.  But I have been abroad so long, and on the voyage home I got worse, and women—­women of your sort who had taken no notice of me, suddenly grew kind.  I said to myself, ’Bella, it looks bad for you when ladies forget how common you are,’ and then the thought struck me, London meant you!  As a patient I might come to your house and be let in.  You are clever and you are great; if I had any self-respect I could not ask you; but I have not, you know; I never had any and’—­and—­I am—­frightened!  It keeps me awake at nights, the fear.  I—­I am not going to—­die?”

“I have said I will do what I can for you.”

“You will sound me?”

“Loosen your dress.”

As he bent over her she raised her hand as if to smoothe his hair, and the colour came into her face, but she did not touch him.

Her fingers, from which she had drawn her gloves, were laden with rings—­rings which he had not given her.  His breath came a little faster as he stooped over her neck.

“Don’t be scared to tell me the truth,” she said; “I guess I’m pretty bad.  You need not take the trouble to lie about it.”