“Here’s Broomhurst, my dear!  I made a mistake in his name after all, I find.  I told you Brookfield, I believe, didn’t I?  Well, it isn’t Brookfield, he says; it’s Broomhurst.”

Mrs. Drayton had walked some little distance across the plain to meet and welcome the expected guest.  She stood quietly waiting while her husband stammered over his incoherent sentences, and then put out her hand.

“We are very glad to see you,” she said, with a quick glance at the new-comer’s face as she spoke.

As they walked together toward the tent, after the first greetings, she felt his keen eyes upon her before he turned to her husband.

“I’m afraid Mrs. Drayton finds the climate trying?” he asked.  “Perhaps she ought not to have come so far in this heat?”

“Kathie is often pale.  You do look white to-day, my dear,” he observed, turning anxiously toward his wife.

“Do I?” she replied.  The unsteadiness of her tone was hardly appreciable, but it was not lost on Broomhurst’s quick ears.  “Oh, I don’t think so.  I feel very well.”

“I’ll come and see if they’ve fixed you up all right,” said Drayton, following his companion toward the new tent that had been pitched at some little distance from the large one.

“We shall see you at dinner then?” Mrs. Drayton observed in reply to Broomhurst’s smile as they parted.

She entered the tent slowly, and, moving up to the table already laid for dinner, began to rearrange the things upon it in a purposeless, mechanical fashion.

After a moment she sank down upon a seat opposite the open entrance, and put her hand to her head.

“What is the matter with me?” she thought, wearily.  “All the week I’ve been looking forward to seeing this man—­any man, any one to take off the edge of this.”  She shuddered.  Even in thought she hesitated to analyse the feeling that possessed her.  “Well, he’s here, and I think I feel worse.”  Her eyes travelled toward the hills she had been used to watch at this hour, and rested on them with a vague, unseeing gaze.

“Tired Kathie?  A penny for your thoughts, my dear,” said her husband, coming in presently to find her still sitting there.

“I’m thinking what a curious world this is, and what an ironical vein of humour the gods who look after it must possess,” she replied, with a mirthless laugh, rising as she spoke.

John looked puzzled.

“Funny my having known Broomhurst before, you mean?” he said doubtfully.

“I was fishing down at Lynmouth this time last year,” Broomhurst said at dinner.  “You know Lynmouth, Mrs. Drayton?  Do you never imagine you hear the gurgling of the stream?  I am tantalised already by the sound of it rushing through the beautiful green gloom of those woods—­aren’t they lovely?  And I haven’t been in this burnt-up spot as many hours as you’ve had months of it.”