ee my mother. She is upstairs--she would be carried there, though I
begged her to take one of the lower rooms. She is in the room in which
she was born."

"I know the way very well," said Mrs. Lumsden. She was for starting up
the stairway, but the young woman detained her by a gesture and turned
to Gabriel.

"Won't you come in?" she inquired. "We are old acquaintances, you know.
Your name is Gabriel--wait!--Gabriel Tolliver. Don't you see how well I
know you? Come, we'll help your grandmother up the stairs." This they
did--the girl with the firm and practised hand of an expert, and Gabriel
with the awkwardness common to young fellows of his age. The young woman
led Mrs. Lumsden to her mother's bedside, and presently came back to
Gabriel.

"We will go down now, if you please," she said. "My mother is very
ill--worse than she has ever been--and you can't imagine how lonely I
am. Mother is at home here, while my home, if I have any, is in
Louisiana. I suppose you never had any trouble?"

"My mother is dead," he said simply. Margaret reached out her hand and
touched him gently on the arm. It was a gesture of impulsive sympathy.

"What is it?" Gabriel asked, thinking she was calling his attention to
something she saw or heard.

"Nothing," she said softly. Gabriel understood then, and he could have
kicked himself for his stupidity. "Your grandmother is a very beautiful
old lady," she remarked after a period of silence.

"She is very good to me," Gabriel replied, at a loss what to say, for he
always shrank from praising those near and dear to him. As he sat
there, he marvelled at the self-possession of this young woman in the
midst of strangers, and with her mother critically ill.

In a little while he heard his grandmother calling him from the head of
the stairs. "Gabriel, jump in the carriage and fetch Dr. Dorrington at
once. He's at home at this hour."

He did as he was bid, and Nan, who was coming uptown on business of her
own, so she said, must needs get in the carriage with her father. The
combination was more than Gabriel had bargained for. There was a twinkle
in Dr. Dorrington's eye, as he glanced good-humouredly from one to the
other, that Gabriel did not like at all. For some reason or other, which
he was unable to fathom, the young man was inclined to fight shy of
Nan's father; and there was nothing he liked less than to find himself
in Dr. Dorrington's company--more especially when Nan was present, too.