sentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately sincere. She was sorry for Miss
Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered and unfeeling, revolted from the
bond of friendship. So she only stooped and laced up the shabby boots,
and fastened the thin cape by its solitary button. The touch of Miss
Quincey's clothes thrilled her with a pang of pity, and she could have
wept over the unutterable pathos of her hat. In form and substance it was
a rock, beaten by the weather; its limp ribbons clung to it like seaweed
washed up and abandoned by the tide. When Miss Quincey's head was inside
it the hat seemed to become one with Miss Quincey; you could not conceive
anything more melancholy and forlorn. Rhoda was beautifully attired in
pale grey cloth. Rhoda wore golden sables about her throat, and a big
black Gainsborough hat on the top of her head, a hat that Miss Quincey
would have thought a little daring and theatrical on anybody else; but
Rhoda wore it and looked like a Puritan princess. Rhoda's clothes were
enough to show that she was a woman for whom a profession is a
superfluity, a luxury.

Rhoda sent for a hansom, and having left Miss Quincey at her home went
off in search of a doctor. She had insisted on a doctor, in spite of Miss
Quincey's protestations. After exploring a dozen dingy streets and
conceiving a deep disgust for Camden Town, she walked back to find her
man in the neighbourhood of St. Sidwell's.




CHAPTER IV

Bastian Cautley, M.D.