d 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.

It was half-past five and Dr. Bastian Cautley had put on his house
jacket, loosened his waistcoat, settled down by his library fire with a
pipe and a book, and was thanking Heaven that for once he had an hour to
himself between his afternoon round and his time for consultation. He had
been working hard ever since nine o'clock in the morning; but now nobody
could have looked more superlatively lazy than Bastian Cautley as he
stretched himself on two armchairs in an attitude of reckless ease. His
very intellect (the most unrestful part of him) was at rest; all his
weary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a beatific state
in which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and thought betrayed
an increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room was double-walled with
book-shelves, and but for the far away underground humming of a happy
maidservant the house was soundless. He rejoiced to think that there was
not a soul in it above stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At six
o'clock he would have to take his legs off that chair, and get into a
frock-coat; once in the frock-coat he would become another man, all
patience and politeness. After six there would be no pipe and no peace
for him, but the knocking and ringing at his front door would go on
incessantly till seven-thirty. There was flattery in every knock, for it
meant that Dr. Cautley was growing eminent, and that at the ridiculously
early age of nine-and-twenty.

There was a sharp ring now. He turned wearily in his