"I don't suppose I shall ever know any more about her," the girl's thoughts ran on, "but I should like to see her again. I never saw anybody like her in my life before, and she looked so sad; I wish I could have helped her more." From this point her reflections passed on to subsequent events of the day: to her own audacious stopping of the big motor; to the grey-eyed man whose failure to recognise her had given her just a tiny pang of regret; to the blue-eyed man, who had looked at her with an admiration to which she was quite unaccustomed. The memory of it brought a little flush to her face, even now that she sat alone in the firelight, and brought with it, too, a stab of resentment.
"I don't think I quite like anybody to look at me like that," she thought; "and, after all, even if I am only a nurse, earning my own living—I—am still a woman." She drew up her head with a proud gesture characteristic of her, and then her reflections slipped away from the two men who had driven her to the doctor's house, and wandered on to the doctor himself.
"I like that man," she murmured emphatically, lifting her foot to push a protruding coal between the bars; "he wouldn't ever look at any woman as if he didn't respect her, and a woman might put her whole trust in him; so she might in—that other!" Rupert's face rose again before her mental vision, and she wondered as she had wondered many times that afternoon and evening, what was the pain that had carved such deep lines in his face, and brought so haunting a look of misery into his eyes.
"His eyes seem as if he was looking all the time for something he has lost," she thought, repeating her former musings; "perhaps, if he is Lady Cicely's cousin, I may see him again some day. I wonder what his name is—besides Rupert? I only heard him called Rupert." She leant back in her chair, her book still upon her knee, her eyes seeing many pictures in the coals—pictures in which a man with a rugged face, and kind grey eyes, seemed to be continually walking beside a tall lady with a beautiful white face, and eyes of unfathomable sadness and mystery, until the pictures merged themselves into dreams, and Christina slept peacefully. A loud knocking at the door startled her into wakefulness, and jumping to her feet, she confronted Mrs. Nairne, who looked at her with injured amusement.
"Been asleep by the fire, missy, I suppose. I couldn't make you hear nohow, knock as I might. There's a gentleman in a motor-car at the door, wanting to speak to you all in a hurry."
"A gentleman—in a motor—wanting me?" Christina asked, feeling that she must still be in the world of dreams.
"Well, he said he wanted to speak to the young lady who was staying here, with the little girl," Mrs. Nairne answered, and Christina, a faint hope stirring at her heart that Lady Cicely's cousin might have come to ask her about Baba, went quickly to the farmhouse door, to be greeted by Dr. Fergusson, who awaited her with obvious impatience.
"I came to see if I could get some help from you," he said, with no other preamble. "I have been to the house in the valley, and things there are pretty bad."
"But—how can I help?" Christina asked.
"I want you to come back with me to the house, and stay there for the night, with the lady of whom you told me to-day."