It surprised him, and left him vaguely disappointed. To break off their interview thus sharply seemed to him motiveless. He could see no reason for it, and his gaze followed her receding figure with speculative regret. When she was out of sight he picked the child up, and, carrying him into the cottage parlour, sat down beside the open window, smoking, and thinking of her.

It was a small room, poorly furnished, and, fretted by its limitations, the child became speedily fractious. A slipshod landlady pottered around, setting forth the crockery for dinner, while the little servant, despatched with the boy from town, mashed his dinner into an unappetising compound on a plate. From time to time she turned to soothe him with some of the loud-voiced faceti? peculiar to the little servant species in its dealings with fretful childhood, and at these moments Carew suspended his meditations on his quondam mistress to wish for the presence of his wife. It was only the second, day of his son\'s visit to him, and his unfamiliarity with the arrangement was not without its effect upon his nerves.

Always dissatisfied with the present time, his capacity for enjoying the past was correspondingly keen. Reflectively consuming a chop, in full view of the unappetising compound and infancy\'s vagaries with a spoon, he proceeded to re-live it, discerning in the process a thousand charms to which the reality had seen him blind.

He was unable to shake off the influence of the meeting when dinner was done. Fancifully, while the child scrambled in a corner with some toys, he installed Mary in the room; imagining his condition if he had married her, and moodily watching the curls of tobacco smoke as they sailed across the dirty dishes. "Damn it!" he exclaimed, rising. But for the conviction that it would be futile, he would have gone out to search for her.

That he would see her again before he left the place he was determined. But he failed to do so both on the morrow and the next day, though he extended his promenade beyond its usual limits. He did not, in these excursions, fail to remark that a town sufficiently large to divide one hopelessly from the face one seeks, can yet be so small that the same strangers\' countenances are recurrent at nearly every turn. A coloured gentleman he anathematised especially for his iteration.

Though he doubted the possibility of the thing, he could not rid himself of the idea that she would be at the theatre some evening, impelled by the temptation to look upon him without his knowledge; and he played his best now on the chance that she might be there. As often as was practicable, he scanned the house during the progress of the piece, and between the acts inspected it through the peep-hole in the curtain.

Noting his observations one night, a pretty girl in the wings asked jocularly if "she had promised to wait outside for him."

"No, Kitty, my darling, she hasn\'t; she won\'t have anything to do with me!" he answered, and would have liked to stop and flirt with her. His brain was hot at the instant, and one woman or another just then——

If Mary had been waiting, he could have talked to her as sentimentally as before; and have felt as much sentiment, too. All compunction for his lapses he could assuage by a general condemnation of masculine nature.

The pretty girl had no part in the play. She was the daughter of a good-looking woman who was engaged in the dual capacity of "chamber-maid" and wardrobe-mistress; but although she had only just left boarding-school, it was a foregone conclusion that, like her mother, she would be connected with the lower branches of the profession before long. Already she had acquired very perfectly, in private, the burlesque lady\'s tone of address, and was familiar with the interior of provincial bars, where her mother took a "tonic" after the performance.

Carew ran across them both, among a group of the male members of the company, in the back-parlour of a public-house an hour later. Kitty, innocent enough as yet to find "darling" a novelty, welcomed him with a flash of her eyes; but he made no response, and, gulping his whisky, sat glum. The others commented on his abstraction. He replied morosely, and called for "the same again." It was not unusual for him to drink to excess now—he was accustomed to excuse the weakness by compassionating himself upon his dreary life—and to-night he lay back on the settee sipping whisky till he grew garrulous.

They remained at the table long after the closing hour, the landlady, who was a friend of Kitty\'s mamma, enjoining them to quietude. She was not averse from joining the party herself when the lights in the window had been extinguished nor did Kitty decline to take a glass of wine when Carew at last pressed her to be sociable.

"Because you\'re growing up," he said with a foolish laugh—"\'getting a big girl now\'!"

She swept him a mock obeisance in the centre of the floor, shaking back the hair that was still worn loose about her shoulders.

"Sherry," she said, "if mother says her popsy may? Because I\'m \'getting a big girl now,\' mother!"

The bar was in darkness, and this necessitated investigation with a box of matches. When the bottle was produced, it proved to be empty; the girl\'s pantomime of despair was received with loud guffaws. Everybody had drunk more than was advisable, and the proprietress again attempted to restrain the hilarity by feeble allusions to her licence.

"The sherry\'s in the cupboard down the passage," she exclaimed; "won\'t you have something else instead? Now, do make less noise, there\'s good boys; you\'ll get me into trouble!"

"I\'ll go and get it," said Kitty, breaking into a momentary step-dance, with uplifted arms. "Trust me with the key?"

"And I\'ll go and see she doesn\'t rob you," cried Carew. "Come along, Kit!"

"No you won\'t," said her mother; "she\'ll do best alone!" But the remonstrance was unheeded, and, as the girl ran out into the passage, he followed; and, as they reached the cupboard and stood fumbling at the lock, he caught her round the waist and kissed her.

They came back with the bottle together, in the girl\'s bearing an assertion of complacent womanhood evoked by the indignity. Carew applied himself to the liquor with renewed diligence; and by the time the party dispersed circumspectly through the private door, his eyes were glazed.

The sleeping town stretched before his uncertain footsteps blanched in moonlight as he bade the others a thick "good-night." His apartments were a mile, and more, distant, and, muddled by drink, he struck into the wrong road, pursuing and branching from it impetuously, till Westport wound about him in the confusion of a maze. Once he halted, in the thought that he heard someone approaching. But the sound receded; and feeling dizzier every minute, he wandered on again, ultimately with no effort to divine his situation. The sun was rising when, partially sobered, he passed through the cottage-gate. The sea lapped the sand gently under a flushing sky; but in the bedroom a candle still burned, and it was in the flare of the candle that the little servant confronted him with a frightened face.

"Master Archie, sir!" she faltered; "I\'ve been up with him all night—he\'s ill!"

"Ill?" He stood stupidly on the threshold. "What do you mean by ill? What is it?"

"I don\'t know; I don\'t know what I ought to do; I think he ought to have a doctor."

He pushed past her, with a muttered ejaculation, to the bed where the child lay whimpering.

"What\'s the matter, Archie? What is it, little chap?"

"It\'s his neck he complains of," she said; "you can see, it\'s all swollen. He can\'t eat anything."

Carew looked at it dismayed. A sudden fear of losing the child, a sudden terror of his own incompetence seized him.

"Fetch a doctor," he stammered, "bring him back with you. You should have gone before; it wasn\'t necessary to wait for me to come in to tell you that if the child was taken ill, he needed a doctor! Go on, girl, hurry! You\'ll find one somewhere in the damned place. Wait a minute, ask the landlady—wake her up and ask which the nearest doctor is! Tell him he must come at once. If he won\'t, ring up another—a delay may make all the difference. Good God! why did I have him down here?"

The waiting threatened to be endless. A basin of water was on the washhand-stand, and he plunged his head into it. The stir of awakening life was heard in the quietude. Through the window came the clatter of feet in a neighbouring yard, the rattle of a pail on stone. He contemplated the child, conscience-stricken by his own condition, and strove to allay his anxiety by repeated questions, to which he obtained peevish and unsatisfactory replies.

It was more than two hours before the girl returned. She was accompanied by a medical man who seemed resentful. Carew watched his examination breathlessly.

"Is it serious?"

"It looks like diphtheria; it\'s early yet to say. He\'s got a first-rate constitution; that\'s one thing. Mother a good physique?... So I should have thought! Are you a resident?"

"I\'m an actor; I\'m in an engagement here; my wife\'s abroad. Why do you ask?"

"The child had better be removed—there\'s danger of infection with diphtheria; lodgings won\'t do. Take him to the hospital, and have him properly looked after. It\'ll be best for him in every way."

"I\'m much obliged for your advice," said Carew. But the idea was intimidating. "I shall be here, myself, for another week at least," he added, in allusion to the fee. "Is it safe to move him, do you think?"

"Oh yes, no need to fear that. Wrap him up, and take him away in a fly this morning. The sooner the better.... That\'s all right. Good-day."

He departed briskly, with an appetite for breakfast.

"Archie will have a nice drive," said Carew in a tone of dreary encouragement—"a nice drive in a carriage with papa."

"I\'m sleepy," said the child.

"A nice drive in the sunshine, and see the sea. Nursie will put on your clothes."

"I don\'t want!"

His efforts to resist strengthened Carew\'s dislike to the proposed arrangement. It was not in the first few minutes that this abrupt presentment of the hospital recalled to the man\'s mind Mary\'s connection with it; and when the connection flashed upon him his spirits lightened. If the boy had to be laid up, away from his mother\'s relatives in London, the mischance could hardly occur under happier conditions than where——The reflection faded to a question-point. Would she be of use? Could he expect, or dare to ask for tenderness from Mary Brettan—and to the other woman\'s child? He doubted it.

In the revulsion of feeling that followed that leaping hope, he almost determined to withhold the request. Many children were safe in a hospital; why not his own child? He would pay for everything. And then the thought of Archie forsaken among strangers made him tremble; and the little form seemed to him, in its lassitude, to have become smaller still, more fragile.

Again and again, in the jolting cab, he debated an appeal to Mary, wrestling with shame for the sake of his boy. Without knowing what she could do, he was sensible that her interest would be of value. He clung passionately to the idea of leaving the hospital with the knowledge that it contained a friend, an individual who would spare to the child something more than the patient\'s purchased and impartial due.

The cab stopped with a jerk, and he carried him into the empty waiting-room. It was a gaunt, narrow apartment on the ground-floor, with an expanse of glass, like the window of a shop, overlooking the street. He put him in a corner of one of the forms against the walls, and, pending the appearance of the house-surgeon, murmured encouragement. The minutes lagged. It occurred to him that the ailment might be pronounced trivial, but the hope deserted him almost as it came, banished by the surroundings. The bare melancholy of the walls chilled him anew, and the suggestion of poverty about the place intensified his misgivings. He thought he would speak to her. If she refused, it would have done no harm. And she would not refuse, she was too good. Yes, she had always been a good woman. He remembered——

The door-knob turned, and he rose in the presence of Kincaid. The eyes of the two men met questioningly.

"Your child?" said Kincaid, advancing.

"Yes; it\'s his neck. I was advised to bring him here, because I\'m only in lodgings. I\'d like——"

"Let me see!"

Carew resumed his seat. His gaze hung on the doctor\'s movements; every detail twanged his nerves. A nurse was called in to take the temperature. He watched her with suspense, and smiled feebly at the child across her arm.

"Diphtheritic throat. We\'ll put him to bed at once. Take him away, Nurse—put him into a special ward."

"I should like——" said Carew huskily; "I know one of the nurses here. Might I see her?"

"Yes, certainly. Which one?"

"Her name is \'Brettan—Mary Brettan.\'" He stooped to pat the tearful face, and missed Kincaid\'s surprise. "If I might see her now——?"

"Ask if Nurse Brettan can come down, please! Say she is wanted in the waiting-room."

A brief pause ensued. The closing of the door left them alone. The father\'s imagination pursued the figures that had disappeared; Kincaid\'s was busy with the fact of the man\'s being an acquaintance of Mary\'s—the only acquaintance that had crossed his path. Surprise suggested his opening remark:

"You\'re a visitor here, you say? Your little son\'s sickness has come at an unfortunate time for you."

"It has—yes, very. I\'m at the theatre—and my apartments are none too good."

He mentioned the address; the doctor made some formal inquiries. Carew asked how often he would be permitted to see the boy; and when this was arranged, silence fell again.

It was broken in a few seconds. The sound of a footstep on the stairs was caught by them simultaneously. Simultaneously both men looked round. The footsteps were succeeded by the faint rustle of a skirt, and Nurse Brettan crossed the threshold. She started visibly—controlled herself, and acknowledged Carew\'s greeting by a slight bow.

Kincaid, in a manner, presented him to her—courteously, constrainedly.

"This gentleman has been waiting to see you. I\'ll wish you good-morning, sir."

Mary moved to the window, and stood there without speaking. In the print and linen costume of the house she recalled with increased force to Carew the time when he had seen her first.

"Archie has got diphtheria," he said; "he\'s just been taken upstairs."

"I\'m sorry," she said. "Why have you asked for me?"

"They told me I couldn\'t keep him at home—that I must bring him here.... Mary, you will do what you can for him?"

She raised her head calmly.

"He is sure of careful nursing," she answered; "no patient is neglected."

"I know. I know all that. I thought that you——"

"I\'m not in the children\'s ward," she said; "there isn\'t anything I can do."

He looked at her dumbly. Mere indifference his agitation would have found vent in combating, but the conclusiveness of the reply left him nothing to urge.

"I must be satisfied without you, then," he said at last. "I thought of you directly."

"He\'ll have every attention; you needn\'t doubt that."

"Such a little chap—among strangers!"

"We have very young children in the wards."

"And perhaps to be dangerously ill!"

"You must try to hope for the best."

"Ah, you speak like the hospital nurse to me!" he cried; "I was remembering the woman."

"I speak as what I am," she returned coldly; "I am one of the nurses. I have no remembrances, myself."

"You could remember this week, when we met again. And once you wouldn\'t have found it so impossible to spare a minute\'s kindness to my boy!"

She moved towards the door, paler, but self-contained.

"I must go now," she said; "I can\'t stay away long."

"You choose to forget only when something is asked of you!"

"I have told you," she said, turning, "that it is out of my power to do anything."

"And you are glad you can say it!"

"Perhaps. No reminder of my old disgrace............