"Richard Pratt."
"What can he possibly mean?" muttered Philip Hamlyn.
But there was no one to answer the question, and he sat buried in thought, trying to answer it himself. Starting up from the useless task, he looked in his desk, found the infallible prescription, and then snatched his watch from his pocket.
"Too late," he decided impatiently; "Pratt would be gone to bed. He goes at all kinds of unearthly hours when out of sorts." So he went upstairs to his wife again, the prescription displayed in his hand.
Morning came, bringing the daily routine of duties in its train. Mrs. Hamlyn had made an engagement to go with some friends to Blackheath, to take luncheon with a lady living there. It was damp and raw in the early portion of the day, but promised to be clear later on.
"And then my little darling can go out to play again," she said, hugging the child to her. "In the afternoon, nurse; it will be drier then; it is really too damp this morning."
Parting from him with fifty kisses, she went down to her comfortable and handsome carriage, her husband placing her in.
"I wish you were coming with me, Philip! But, you see, it is only ladies to-day. Six of us."
Philip Hamlyn laughed. "I don't wish it at all," he answered; "they would be fighting for me. Besides, I must take old Pratt his prescription. Only picture his storm of anger if I did not."
Mrs. Hamlyn was not back until just before dinner: her husband, she heard, had been out all day, and was not yet in. Waiting for him in the drawing-room listlessly enough, she walked to the window to look out. And there she saw with a sort of shock the same woman standing in the same place as the previous evening. Not once all day long had she thought of her.