medicine has made me, he will be quite ready to
withdraw his objections. In the meantime I am sure you feel, as I do,
that our little ruse has been quite justifiable!"

Miss Milligan did. She felt quite proud of her part in it. It is
something to help a fellow woman and still more to get the better of a
fellow man. Especially such a celebrated man as Dr. Callandar! She would
order the fresh supply at once, that very afternoon, by the first mail.
And as soon as the packet came she would see that Mrs. Coombe had it in
person. "There is certain to be a few last touches necessary to the
dress after it has been sent home," she remarked with a smile of truly
Machiavellian subtlety.

"Yes!" said Mary. "That night--after the dress comes home!" She spoke
sharply, unnaturally. Her face turned a dull, pasty white. She shook so
that Miss Milligan was thoroughly frightened. But presently she
controlled herself and forced a pathetic smile.

"You see, dear Miss Milligan, how much I need it."

"Indeed a blind bat could see that!" said the dressmaker pityingly.
"Shall I call the nurse?"

But Mrs. Coombe would not hear of Miss Milligan calling the nurse!

CHAPTER XXXIII

It is the onlooker who sees most of the game and Aunt Amy was an ideal
onlooker. Always self-effacing and silent, she was now more silent and
self-effacing still. Consequently the principal actors tended to forget
their parts when in her presence. No one explained anything to Aunt Amy
but no one concealed anything from her. She simply "didn't matter." So
far as the playing out of the little drama was concerned, Aunt Amy was
supposed to be safely off the stage. She looked and listened, had her
strange flashes of psychic insight and came to her own conclusions about
it all, quite undisturbed by facts as they appeared to others. Her
conclusions were very simple. Esther loved the doctor. The doctor loved
Esther. That, in spite of this, Callandar was deliberately planning to
marry Mary she considered a purely arbitrary matter arranged by those
mysteriously malignant powers known as "They." Callandar, himself, had
clearly no choice, Esther was helpless, and Mary triumphed easily and
inevitably because Mary was one of "Them" herself. Aunt Amy had become
firmly convinced of this latter fact. Everything went to prove it--the
theft of the ring, the threat to shut her (Amy) up, the easy triumph
over Esther, and a thousand and one trifles all "confirmation strong as