tor dropped into a chair.

"Giving a tertulia?" he said, with a detached air.

"A simple greeting for all the kind friends who care to come."

"And only to-morrow?"

"Yes. Charles would be tired out after a day at the mine, and so I----It
would be good to have him to myself for one evening on our return to
this house I love. It has seen all my life."

"Ah, yes!" snarled the doctor, suddenly. "Women count time from the
marriage feast. Didn't you live a little before?"

"Yes; but what is there to remember? There were no cares."

Mrs. Gould sighed. And as two friends, after a long separation, will
revert to the most agitated period of their lives, they began to talk of
the Sulaco Revolution. It seemed strange to Mrs. Gould that people who
had taken part in it seemed to forget its memory and its lesson.

"And yet," struck in the doctor, "we who played our part in it had our
reward. Don Pepe, though superannuated, still can sit a horse. Barrios
is drinking himself to death in jovial company away somewhere on his
fundacion beyond the Bolson de Tonoro. And the heroic Father Roman--I
imagine the old padre blowing up systematically the San Tome mine,
uttering a pious exclamation at every bang, and taking handfuls of
snuff between the explosions--the heroic Padre Roman says that he is not
afraid of the harm Holroyd's missionaries can do to his flock, as long
as he is alive."

Mrs. Gould shuddered a little at the allusion to the destruction that
had come so near to the San Tome mine.

"Ah, but you, dear friend?"

"I did the work I was fit for."

"You faced the most cruel dangers of all. Something more than death."

"No, Mrs. Gould! Only death--by hanging. And I am rewarded beyond my
deserts."

Noticing Mrs. Gould's gaze fixed upon him, he dropped his eyes.

"I've made my career--as you see," said the Inspector-General of State
Hospitals, taking up lightly the lapels of his superfine black coat.
The doctor's self-respect marked inwardly by the almost complete
disappearance from his dreams of Father Beron appeared visibly in what,
by contrast with former carelessness, seemed an immoderate cult of
personal appearance. Carried out within severe limits of form and
colour, and in perpetual freshness, this change of apparel gave to Dr.
Monygham an air at the same time professional and festive; while his
gait and the unchanged crabbed character of his face acquired from it a
startling force of incongruity.

"Yes," he w