On the next day he reached Maple Cottage between four and five o'clock.
"How is your mistress?" he said to Milly.
She had opened the door and let him in with a vivid blush and smile, which made him for a moment, and in the broad light of day, feel somewhat ashamed of himself.
"Oh, sir, she is no better. She has locked herself in, and I heard her sobbing, fit to break her heart," said Milly, in real concern for her mistress' untold grief.
"Let her know that I am here. I will go to Mrs. Campion's room."
"Well, mother!" he said, in the hearty, jovial voice in which he knew that she liked best to be accosted, "here is your absentee boy again. How are you by this time?"
"Not very bright to-day, Sydney," said his mother. "I never am very bright now-a-days. But what are you doing, my dear? Are you getting on well? Have they——"
"No, mother, they have not made me Lord Chancellor yet. We must wait a while for that. But I must not complain; I have plenty of work, and my name is in the papers every day, and I have applied for silk, and—have you found your spectacles yet, mother?"
Details of his life and work were, as he knew, absolutely unmeaning to Mrs. Campion.
"Oh, the rogue! He always teased me about my spectacles," said Mrs. Campion, vaguely appealing to an unseen audience. "It is a remarkable thing, Sydney, but I put them down half an hour ago, and now I cannot find them anywhere."