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face was white and drawn. She could give no rational account of herself, but offered two hypotheses as equally satisfactory; either she had taken a bad chill, or else the hot air from the water-pipes had turned her faint. Rhoda picked up the pile of exercise-books and led her into the dressing-room, and Miss Quincey was docile and ridiculously grateful. She was glad that Miss Vivian was going to take her home. She even smiled her little pinched smile and pressed Rhoda's hand as she said, "A friend in need is a friend indeed." Rhoda would have given anything to be able to return the pressure and the sentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately sincere. She was sorry for Miss Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from the bond of friendship. So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots, and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button. The touch of Miss Quincey's clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, and she could have wept over the unutterable pathos of her hat. In form and substance it was a rock, beaten by the weather; its limp ribbons clung to it like seaweed washed up and abandoned by the tide. When Miss Quincey's head was inside it the hat seemed to become one with Miss Quincey; you could not conceive anything more melancholy and forlorn. Rhoda was beautifully attired in pale grey cloth. Rhoda wore golden sables about her throat, and a big black Gainsborough hat on the top of her head, a hat that Miss Quincey would have thought a little daring and theatrical on anybody else; but Rhoda wore it and looked like a Puritan princess. Rhoda's clothes were enough to show that she was a woman for whom a profession is a superfluity, a luxury.
Rhoda sent for a hansom, and having left Miss Quincey at her home went off in search of a doctor. She had insisted on a doctor, in spite of Miss Quincey's protestations. After exploring a dozen dingy streets and conceiving a deep disgust for Camden Town, she walked back to find her man in the neighbourhood of St. Sidwell's.

CHAPTER IV
Bastian Cautley, M.D.
It was half-past five and Dr. Bastian Cautley had put on his house jacket, loosened his waistcoat, settled down by his library fire with a pipe and a book, and was thanking Heaven that for once he had an hour to himself between his afternoon round and his time for consultation. He had been working hard ever since nine o'clock in the morning; but now nobody could have looked more superlatively lazy than Bastian Cautley as he stretched himself on two armchairs in an attitude of reckless ease. His very intellect (the most unrestful part of him) was at rest; all his weary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a beatific state in which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and thought betrayed an increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room was double-walled with book-shelves, and but for the far away underground humming of a happy maidservant the house was soundless. He rejoiced to think that there was not a soul in it above stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At six o'clock he would have to take his legs off that chair, and get into a frock-coat; once in the frock-coat he would become another man, all patience and politeness. After six there would be no pipe and no peace for him, but the knocking and ringing at his front door would go on incessantly till seven-thirty. There was flattery in every knock, for it meant that Dr. Cautley was growing eminent, and that at the ridiculously early age of nine-and-twenty.
There was a sharp ring now. He turned wearily in his chairs.
"There's another damned patient," said Dr. Cautley.
He was really so eminent that he could afford to think blasphemously of patients; and he had no love for those who came to consult him before their time. He sat up with his irritable nerves on edge. The servant was certainly letting somebody in, and from the soft rustling sounds in the hall he gathered that somebody was a woman; much patience and much politeness would then be required of him, and he was feeling anything but patient and polite.
"Miss Rhoda Vivian" was the name on the card that was brought to him. He did not know Miss Rhoda Vivian.
The gas-jets were turned low in the consulting-room; when he raised them he saw a beautiful woman standing by the fire in an attitude of impatience. He had kept her waiting; and it seemed that this adorable person knew the value of time. She was not going to waste words either. As it was impossible to associate her with the ordinary business of the place, he