"And Lucy?"
"Lucy's temperature, as I expected, has gone down with a run since she heard you were coming. The doctor says all will be well now."
Mona drew a long breath of relief, and looked up in his face with a smile.
He laid his hand on her shoulder. "Where is your luggage?"
"This porter has my valise. That is all."
They got into a hansom, while the tall footman conducted Doris to a neat brougham, and a moment later they rattled away.
If Sir Douglas made Mona "a girl again," Mr Reynolds made her feel herself a child. With him her superficial crust of cynicism vanished like hoar-frost before the sun, and gave place to a gentle deference which had completely won the old man's heart. "The type of woman I admire," he had said with dignity to Lucy, "is the woman of clear intellect;" but it is probable that the woman of clear intellect would have appealed to him less, if she had not looked at him with pathetic revering eyes that seemed to say, "They call me clever and strong, but I am only a fatherless girl after all."
"Will Lucy be settled for the night when we get home?" Mona asked, when she had exhausted her other questions.
"No; she gets a hypodermic injection of morphia when the pain comes on, and that was to be postponed, if possible, till our arrival."
In a few minutes the cab drew up at a dimly lighted door in Bloomsbury. The house was old-fashioned and substantial; but a certain air of squalor is inseparably associated with most London lodgings, and it was not altogether absent here.