"Do sit down," she said suddenly; and there was a little nervous tone in her voice.
Instead of obeying her he put a question to her.
"What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked.
She pretended to misunderstand him.
"I told Caroline I was sure I was not fit to be seen to-day;" then she shrugged her shoulders. "Late hours, my dear friend. The result of all the silly, stupid things that I know you want to denounce from the housetop. I came home very late last night," she said, after a little pause. "I played cards, and I lost a lot!... And then I found some tiresome letters waiting for me, and so"—she shrugged her shoulders a second time—"I had a bad night, and to-day, of course, I look a wreck."
"I think you ought to see a doctor," said Rupert Haverford.
Camilla moved impatiently in her chair.
"How unoriginal a man is! You are all alike," she said. "You imagine that as soon as a doctor has scribbled something on a paper, and the chemist has sent in a neat little white packet, and an equally neat little bill, then everything must be all right! Shakespeare was a man, but he knew things better than most of you do. He knew, for instance, that all the doctors in the world cannot do any good when the mind is ill."
There was a pause, in which Camilla made a strange discovery. She found she could hear her own heart beat quite plainly.
Was it chance or Providence that had sent this man to her now?