I assure you he isn't here now."

The girl--for in spite of her pale misery she did not look
more--drew her dark shawl more closely round herself and the child
with a little, despairing shudder, glancing over her shoulder.
Rainham let his eyes rest on the frail figure pityingly, and a
thought of the river behind her struck him with a sudden chill.

He put his hand, almost surreptitiously, into his pocket.

"Where do you live?" he asked. "Near here?" The girl mentioned a
street which he sometimes passed through when economy of time
induced him to make an otherwise undesirable short-cut to the
railway station. "Well," he said presently, "I can't keep my friend
here waiting, you know. Come and see me to-morrow morning about
midday, and I will see if I can help you. Only you must promise me
to go straight home now! And"--here he dropped a coin quickly into
her hand--"buy something for your child; you both look as if you
wanted it."

The girl looked at him dumbly for a moment.

"I will come, sir, and--and thank you!" she said, with a quaver in
her voice. And then, in obedience to Rainham's playfully threatening
gesture, she turned away.

Rainham gazed after her until she had turned the corner.

"I'm sorry to have treated you to this--scene," he said
apologetically, as he joined Oswyn, who was gazing over the narrow
bridge. "I felt bound to do something for the girl, after she had
been wasting all that time outside my gates. Did you notice what a
pretty, refined face she had? I wonder who the man can be--Crichton,
Cecil Crichton, wasn't it?... I never heard the name before. It
doesn't sound like a sailor's name."

"Cecil Crichton?" echoed the other. "No ... and yet it sounds
familiar. Perhaps I am thinking of the Admirable, though he wasn't
Cecil, as far as I remember. The old story, I suppose. Cecil
Crichton--ah, Cyril Crichton?" he repeated. Then, dismissing the
subject somewhat brutally, "Ah, well, it's no business of mine! Will
you give me a light? Thanks!"

CHAPTER VII

At three o'clock Lightmark dismissed his model--an Italian, with a
wonderfully fine torso and admirable capabilities for picturesque
pose, whom he had easily persuaded to abandon his ice-cream barrow
to sit for him two or three times a week, acting the part of studio
servant in the intervals.

"That will do, Cesare," he said, "_aspetto persone_; besides, you're
shivering: I shall have you catching cold next, and I can't paint
while y