early days; he was very interesting. Ah, it would be all right now if
the doctor found him well enough, for the lady was already going--that
was she, coming through the hall.

She came slowly towards them--erect, gray, grim--a still handsome
apparition. Paul started. To his horror, Yerba ran impulsively
forward, and said eagerly: "Is he better? Can he see us now?"

The woman halted an instant, seemed to gather the prayer-book and
reticule she was carrying closer to her breast, but was otherwise
unchanged. Replying to Paul rather than the young girl, she said
rigidly: "The patient is able to see Mr. Hathaway and Miss Yerba
Buena," and passed slowly on. But as she reached the door she unloosed
her black mourning veil from her bonnet, and seemed to drop it across
her face with the gesture that Paul remembered she had used twelve
years ago.

"She frightens me!" said Yerba, turning a suddenly startled face on
Paul. "Oh, Paul, I hope it isn't an omen, but she looked like some one
from the grave!"

"Hush!" said Paul, turning away a face that was whiter than her own.
"They are coming now."

The house surgeon had returned a trifle graver. They might see him
now, but they must be warned that he wandered at times a little; and,
if he might suggest, if it was anything of family importance, they had
better make the most of their time and his lucid intervals. Perhaps if
they were old friends--VERY old friends--he would recognize them. He
was wandering much in the past--always in the past.

They found him in the end of the ward, but so carefully protected and
partitioned off by screens that the space around his cot had all the
privacy and security of an apartment. He was very much changed; they
would scarcely have known him, but for the delicately curved aquiline
profile and the long white moustache--now so faint and etherealized as
to seem a mere spirit wing that rested on his pillow. To their
surprise he opened his eyes with a smile of perfect recognition, and,
with thin fingers beyond the coverlid, beckoned to them to approach.
Yet there was still a shadow of his old reserve in his reception of
Paul, and, although one hand interlocked the fingers of Yerba--who had
at first rushed impulsively forward and fallen on her knees beside the
bed--and the other softly placed itself upon her head, his eyes were
fixed upon the young man's with the ceremoniousness due to a stranger.

"I am glad to see, sir," he began in a