he did not like her
asking, and were hesitating whether to answer. But he said at last,
"She is no better. She will be worse before she is better. You see,"
he added, "that I haven't been able to arrest the disorder in its first
stage. We must hope for what can be done now, in the second."

She had gathered from the half jocose ease with which he had listened
to Mrs. Maynard's account of herself, and to her own report, an
encouragement which now fell to the ground "Yes," she assented, in her
despair, "that is the only hope."

He sat beside the table in the hotel parlor, where they found themselves
alone for the moment, and drubbed upon it with an absent look. "Have you
sent for her husband?" he inquired, returning to himself.

"Yes; Mr. Libby telegraphed the evening we saw you."

"That's good," said Dr. Mulbridge, with comfortable approval; and he
rose to go away.

Grace impulsively detained him. "I--won't--ask you whether you consider
Mrs. Maynard's case a serious one, if you object to my doing so."

"I don't know that I object," he said slowly, with a teasing smile, such
as one might use with a persistent child whom one chose to baffle in
that way.

She disdained to avail herself of the implied permission. "What I
mean--what I wish to tell you is--that I feel myself responsible for her
sickness, and that if she dies, I shall be guilty of her death."

"Ah?" said Dr. Mulbridge, with more interest, but the same smile. "What
do you mean?"

"She didn't wish to go that day when she was caught in the storm. But I
insisted; I forced her to go." She stood panting with the intensity of
the feeling which had impelled her utterance.

"What do you mean by forcing her to go?"

"I don't know. I--I--persuaded her."

Dr. Mulbridge smiled, as if he perceived her intention not to tell him
something she wished to tell him. He looked down into his hat, which he
carried in his hand.

"Did you believe the storm was coming?"

"No!"

"And you did n't make it come?"

"Of course not!"

He looked at her and laughed.

"Oh, you don't at all understand!" she cried.

"I'm not a doctor of divinity," he said. "Good morning."

"Wait, wait!" she implored, "I'm afraid--I don't know--Perhaps my being
near her is injurious to her; perhaps I ought to let some one else nurse
her. I wished to ask you this"--She stopped breathlessly.

"I don't think you have done her any harm as yet," he answered lightly.

"However," he said, afte