l, how
strange that you should say that!"

"Say what, dear?"

"That old song," she said rather incoherently. "It--it has memories for
me--memories that hurt."

"What memories?" he asked.

But she could not tell him, and he passed the matter by.

The man in the conservatory drew back with his hands deep in his
pockets, and went back by the way he had come.

CHAPTER XXVI

A FOOL'S ERRAND

Dr. Jim's expectations, so far as Olga was concerned, were fulfilled.
When he went back to Weir, she remained in town with Nick and Muriel.
But he did not go back alone. Will, Daisy, and Peggy went with him.
Daisy's love for Dr. Jim was almost as great as her love for Nick, and
Will had spent his boyhood under his care.

There was a cottage close to the doctor's house which Daisy had tenanted
seven or eight years before when she had been obliged to come Home for
her health and Will had been left behind in India. Dr. Jim had managed
to secure this cottage a second time, and here they were soon installed
with all the joy of exiles in an English spring.

"But we are not going to forego the honeymoon," Will said on their first
evening, as he and Daisy stood together in the ivy-covered porch.

She laughed--that little laugh of hers half-gay, half-sad, that seemed
like a reminiscence of more mirthful days. "Isn't this romantic enough
for you?"

He slipped his arm about her waist. "I'm not altogether sure that I did
right to let you come here," he said.

"Oh, nonsense!" She leaned her head against him with a very loving
gesture. "I am not so morbid as that. I love to be here, and close to
dear old Jim. He hasn't altered a bit. He is just as rugged--and as
sweet--as ever."

Will laughed. "How you women, do love a masterful man!"

"Oh, not always," said Daisy. "There are certain forms of mastery in a
man which to my mind are quite intolerable. Max Wyndham for instance!"

"What! You've still got your knife into him? I'm sorry for the man
myself," said Will. "It must be--well, difficult, to say the least of
it, to see his brother come home in possession of his girl and to keep
smiling."

"He doesn't care!" said Daisy scathingly. "Geniuses haven't time to be
human."

"I wonder," said Will.

He knew, and had never ceased to regret, his wife's share in the
accomplishment of Max's discomfiture; and he fancied that secretly, her
antipathy notwithstanding, she had begun to regret it also.

He changed the subject, and t