an? What
could two ladies want with him? The young man felt his face burn with
painful anticipations, a little shame, and much impatience. Probably the
sister who adored Fred, and never could learn to believe that he was not
unfortunate and a victim. This would be a climax to the occupation of
his house.

As the poor doctor gloomily approached the door of the room in which he
had spent last evening, he heard a little rustle and commotion not quite
consistent with his expectations--a hum of voices and soft stir such as
youthful womankind only makes. Then a voice entirely strange to him
uttered an exclamation. Involuntarily he started and changed his aspect.
He did not know the voice, but it was young, sweet, peculiar. The cloud
lightened a little upon the doctor's face. Notwithstanding Bessie
Christian, he was still young enough to feel a little flutter of curiosity
when he heard such a voice sounding out of his room. Hark! what did she
say? It was a profoundly prosaic speech.

"What an intolerable smell of smoke! I shouldn't wonder a bit--indeed,
I rather think he must be, or he wouldn't live in a place like this--if
he were exactly such another as Fred."

"Poor Fred!" said a plaintive voice, "if we only can learn where he is.
Hush, there is a footstep! Ah, it is not my poor fellow's footstep!
Nettie, hark!"

"No, indeed! twenty thousand times sharper, and more like a man," said
the other, in hurried breathless accents. "Hark! here he is."

The entire bewilderment, the amaze, apprehension, confusion with which
Dr Rider entered the room from which this scrap of conversation reached
him, is indescribable. A dreadful sense that something was about to
happen seized the young man's mind with an indescribable curiosity. He
paused an instant to recover himself, and then went boldly and silently
into the room which had become mysterious through its new inmates. They
both turned round upon him as he entered. Two young women: one who had
been sitting at the table, looking faded, plaintive, and anxious, rose
up suddenly, and, clasping her hands, as if in entreaty, fixed two
bright but sunken eyes upon his face. The other, a younger, lighter
figure, all action and haste, interposed between him and her companion.
She put up one hand in warning to the petitioner behind her, and one to
call the attention of the bewildered stranger before. Evidently the one
thing which alarmed this young lady was that somebody would speak before