erefore, a sensation almost amounting to chagrin when coming round
once more, he found they had eluded him and gone off together without
coming under his inspection. Feeling his feet a good deal, for he had
been on them all day, he sat down in the hollow which she had left
behind her; and against his will found himself also looking at the
picture. It was painted in a style he did not care for; the face of the
subject, too, gave him the queer feeling that the gentleman was being
roasted inside. He had not been sitting there long, however, before
he perceived the lady standing by the picture, and the lips of the
gentleman in the picture moving. It seemed to him against the rules, and
he got up at once, and went towards it; but as he did so, he found that
his eyes were shut, and opened them hastily. There was no one there.

From the National Gallery, Audrey had gone into an A.B.C. for tea, and
then home. Before the Mansions was a taxi-cab, and the maid met her with
the news that 'Lady Caradoc' was in the sitting-room.

Barbara was indeed standing in the middle of the room with a look on her
face such as her father wore sometimes on the racecourse, in the hunting
field, or at stormy Cabinet Meetings, a look both resolute and sharp.
She spoke at once:

"I got your address from Mr. Courtier. My brother is ill. I'm afraid
it'll be brain fever, I think you had better go and see him at his rooms
in the Temple; there's no time to be lost."

To Audrey everything in the room seemed to go round; yet all her senses
were preternaturally acute, so that she could distinctly smell the mud
of the river at low tide. She said, with a shudder:

"Oh! I will go; yes, I will go at once."

"He's quite alone. He hasn't asked for you; but I think your going is
the only chance. He took me for you. You told me once you were a good
nurse."

"Yes."

The room was steady enough now, but she had lost the preternatural
acuteness of her senses, and felt confused. She heard Barbara say: "I
can take you to the door in my cab," and murmuring: "I will get ready,"
went into her bedroom. For a moment she was so utterly bewildered that
she did nothing. Then every other thought was lost in a strange, soft,
almost painful delight, as if some new instinct were being born in her;
and quickly, but without confusion or hurry, she began packing. She put
into a valise her own toilet things; then flannel, cotton-wool, eau de
Cologne, hot-water bottle, Etna, shawl