My first speech to Mr. Hamilton was to regret that he had not sent for me the previous night.

‘Oh no,’ he said pleasantly.  ’I am quite glad now that your rest was not disturbed.’  And then he went on looking at me with the same queer expression that his face had worn before.

’Do you know, Miss Garston, your remark quite startled me?  Somehow I do not seem to recognise my nurse to-night.  When I came into the drawing-room just now I thought there was a strange young lady sitting by Tudor.’

Of course I was curious to know what he meant; but he positively refused to enlighten me, and went on speaking about his poor little patient.

’She was an only child; but nothing could have saved her.  The Blagroves are well-to-do people,—­Brighton shopkeepers,—­so they hardly come under the category of your patients.  Miss Garston, you call yourself a servant of the poor, do you not?’

‘I should not refuse to help any one who really needed it,’ was my reply.  ’But, of course, if people can afford to hire service I should think my labour thrown away on them.’

’Ah! just so.  But now and then we meet with a case where hirelings can give no comfort.  With the Blagroves, for example, there was nothing to be done but just to watch the child’s feeble life ebb away.  A miracle only could have saved her; but all the same it was impossible to go away and leave them.  They were young people, and had never seen death before.’

I was surprised to hear him speak with so much feeling.  And I liked that expression ‘servant of the poor.’  It sounded to me as though he had at last grasped my meaning, and that I had nothing more to fear from his sarcasm.

I wondered what had wrought such a sudden change in him, for I had only worked such a few days.  Certainly it would make things far easier if I could secure him as an ally; and I began to hope that we should go on more smoothly in the future.

Mr. Hamilton was evidently a man whom it would take long to know.  His was by no means a character easy to read.  One would be sure to be startled by new developments and curious contradictions.  I had known him only for ten days; but then we had met constantly in that short time.  I had seen him hard in manner and soft in speech, cool, critical, and disparaging, at one moment satirical and provoking, the next full of thoughtfulness and readiness to help.  No wonder I found it difficult to comprehend him.

When we had finished discussing the Blagroves, Mr. Hamilton turned his attention to his other guests, and tried to promote the general conversation:  this left me at liberty to make my own observations.

Miss Hamilton sat at the top of the table facing her brother, and Uncle Max and Mr. Tudor were beside her; but she did not speak to either of them unless they addressed her, and her replies seemed to be very brief.  If I had been less interested in her I might have accused her of want of animation, for it is hardly playing the role of a hostess to look beautiful and be chary of words and smiles.