‘Just as you like, dear.’

By three o’clock the invalid was calmly slumbering.  Having entered the bedroom on tiptoe and heard regular breathing, Sidwell went down and for a few minutes lingered about the hall.  A servant came to her for instructions on some domestic matter; when this was dismissed she mentioned that, if anyone called, she would be found in the library.

The pamphlets of which her father had spoken were soon discovered.  She laid them aside, and seated herself by the fire, but without leaning back.  At any sound within or outside the house she moved her head to listen.  Her look was anxious, but the gleam of her eyes expressed pleasurable agitation.

At half-past three she went into the drawing-room, where all the furniture was draped, and the floor bare.  Standing where she could look from a distance through one of the windows, at which the blind had been raised, she waited for a quarter of an hour.  Then the chill atmosphere drove her back to the fireside.  In the study, evidences of temporary desertion were less oppressive, but the windows looked only upon a sequestered part of the garden.  Sidwell desired to watch the approach from the high-road, and in a few minutes she was again in the drawing-room.  But scarcely had she closed the door behind her when a ringing of the visitors’ bell sounded with unfamiliar distinctness.  She started, hastened from the room, fled into the library, and had time to seat herself before she heard the footsteps of a servant moving in answer to the summons.

The door opened, and Peak was announced.

Sidwell had never known what it was to be thus overcome with emotion.  Shame at her inability to command the calm features with which she would naturally receive a caller flushed her cheeks and neck; she stepped forward with downcast eyes, and only in offering her hand could at length look at him who stood before her.  She saw at once that Peak was unlike himself; he too had unusual warmth in his countenance, and his eyes seemed strangely large, luminous.  On his forehead were drops of moisture.

This sight restored her self-control, or such measure of it as permitted her to speak in the conventional way.

’I am sorry that mother can’t leave her room.  She had a slight cold this morning, but I didn’t think it would give her any trouble.’

Peak was delighted, and betrayed the feeling even whilst he constrained his face into a look of exaggerated anxiety.

’It won’t be anything serious, I hope?  The railway journey, I’m afraid.’

’Yes, the journey.  She has a slight hoarseness, but I think we shall prevent it from’——­