ubt that his brother's feelings of relief and comfort would have been
unfeigned; now, however, he began to think the matter over, and to
justify to himself his extraordinary sense of disappointment. As he
poured out his own coffee with a sober face, his eye rested upon that
easy-chair which had been brought into such prominence in the history
of the last two days. He kept looking at it as he sipped that gloomy
coffee. Fred had faded from the great chair; his big image threw no
shadow upon it. There sat a little fairy queen, tiny as Titania, but
dark as an elf of the East, putting up those two shapely tiny hands,
brown and beautiful, to push aside the flood of hair, which certainly
would have veiled her little figure all over, the doctor thought, had it
been let down. Wonderful little sprite! She, no doubt, had dragged her
plaintive sister over the seas--she it was that had forced her way into
Edward Rider's house; taken her position in it, ousted the doctor; and
she doubtless it was who swept the husband and wife out of it again,
leaving no trace behind. Waking up from a little trance of musing upon
this too interesting subject, Dr Rider suddenly raised himself into an
erect position, body and mind, with an involuntary movement, as if to
shake off the yoke of the enchantress. He reminded himself instinctively
of his brother's falsehood and ingratitude. After throwing himself a
most distasteful burden on Edward's charity for five long dreary months,
the bugbear of the doctor's dreams, and heavy ever-recurring climax of
his uncomfortable thoughts, here had Fred departed without a word of
explanation or thanks, or even without saying good-bye. The doctor
thought himself quite justified in being angry. He began to feel that
the suspicious uneasiness which possessed him was equally natural and
inevitable. Such a thankless, heartless departure was enough to put any
man out. To imagine that Fred could be capable of it, naturally went to
his brother's heart.

That day there was still no word of the party who had disappeared so
mysteriously out of the doctor's house. Dr Rider went to his hard day's
work vaguely expectant, feeling sure he must hear of them somehow, and
more interested in hearing of them than was to be expected from his
former low ebb of fraternal affection. When he returned and found still
no letter, no message, the blank disappointment of the former night
closed still more blankly upon him. When one is all by one