“Good Heavens! What a tragedy for the man,” commented Flossie. “We must help her,” she answered somewhat lamely. “She’s anxious to learn, I know.”!

Joan laughed. “I’ve been feeling as if I were the King of Bavaria,” she said. “Interviewing?” he suggested.

He saw her on to a bus at Kingston, and himself went back by train. They agreed they would not mention it to Mrs. Phillips. Not that she would have minded. The danger was that she would want to come, too; honestly thinking thereby to complete their happiness. It seemed to be tacitly understood there would be other such excursions. “I felt a bit afraid of her,” laughed Joan, “so I made her promise not to part with it. Is he really very ill, her husband?” Hilda! Why had she never thought of it? The whole thing was so obvious. “You ought not to think about yourself. You ought to think only of him and of his work. Nothing else matters.” If she could say that to Joan, what might she not have said to her mother who, so clearly, she divined to be the incubus—the drag upon her father’s career? She could hear the child’s dry, passionate tones—could see Mrs. Phillips’s flabby cheeks grow white—the frightened, staring eyes. Where her father was concerned the child had neither conscience nor compassion. She had waited her time. It was a few days after Hilda’s return to school that Mrs. Phillips had been first taken ill.