while she was speaking:--

"My carriage broke down." He drew a chair toward the fireplace, and
asked, with his face toward the dying fire:--

"How are you feeling to-day, madam,--stronger?"

"Yes; I can almost say I'm well." The blush was still on her face
as he turned to receive her answer, but she smiled with a bright
courageousness that secretly amused and pleased him. "I thank you,
Doctor, for my recovery; I certainly should thank you." Her face lighted
up with that soft radiance which was its best quality, and her smile
became half introspective as her eyes dropped from his, and followed her
outstretched hand as it rearranged the farther edges of the
dressing-gown one upon another.

"If you will take better care of yourself hereafter, madam," responded
the Doctor, thumping and brushing from his knee some specks of mud that
he may have got when his carriage broke down, "I will thank you.
But"--brush--brush--"I--doubt it."

"Do you think you should?" she asked, leaning forward from the back of
the great chair and letting her wrists drop over the front of its broad
arms.

"I do," said the Doctor, kindly. "Why shouldn't I? This present attack
was by your own fault." While he spoke he was looking into her eyes,
contracted at their corners by her slight smile. The face was one of
those that show not merely that the world is all unknown to them, but
that it always will be so. It beamed with inquisitive intelligence, and
yet had the innocence almost of infancy. The Doctor made a discovery;
that it was this that made her beautiful. "She _is_ beautiful," he
insisted to himself when his critical faculty dissented.

"You needn't doubt me, Doctor. I'll try my best to take care. Why, of
course I will,--for John's sake." She looked up into his face from the
tassel she was twisting around her finger, touching the floor with her
slippers' toe and faintly rocking.

"Yes, there's a chance there," replied the grave man, seemingly not
overmuch pleased; "I dare say everything you do or leave undone is for
his sake."

The little wife betrayed for a moment a pained perplexity, and then
exclaimed:--

"Well, of course!" and waited his answer with bright eyes.

"I have known women to think of their own sakes," was the response.

She laughed, and with unprecedented sparkle replied:--

"Why, whatever's his sake is my sake. I don't see the difference. Yes, I
see, of course, how there might be a difference; but I don't see how a