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Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves; they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted herself to talk gaily.

As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive fashion of Lymchurch.

“’E gave me a letter for you,” said the child, and Rosamund took it, giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.

“Excuse me,” she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses. She read the letter, frowned, read it again. “Constance, you might get the coffee.”

Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.

“This is your doing,” she said with a concentrated fury that brought him to his feet facing her. “Why did you come and meddle! You’ve told him I was rich—the very thing I didn’t mean him to know till—till he couldn’t help himself. You’ve spoilt everything! And now he’s gone—and he’ll never come back. Oh, I hope you will suffer for this