he looked up at him, as if hesitating what she should say.

"Sophy Pargeter?" he repeated the name mechanically, but with a sudden
wincing.

Vanderlyn had always disliked, with a rather absurd, unreasoning
dislike, Peggy's plain-featured, rough-tongued sister-in-law. To him
Sophy Pargeter had ever been a grotesque example of the deep--they
almost appear racial--differences which may, and so often do, exist
between different members of a family whose material prosperity is due
to successful commerce.

The vast inherited wealth which had made of Tom Pargeter a selfish,
pleasure-loving, unmoral human being, had transformed his sister Sophy
into a woman oppressed by the belief that it was her duty to spend the
greater part of her considerable income in what she believed to be good
works. She regarded with grim disapproval her brother's way of life, and
she condemned even his innocent pleasures; she had, however, always been
fond of Peggy. Laurence Vanderlyn, himself the outcome and product of an
old Puritan New England and Dutch stock, was well aware of the horror
and amazement with which Miss Pargeter would regard Peggy's present
action.

"Well, Laurence, the day that I arrived there, I mean at Sophy's
house, I felt very ill. I suppose the journey had tired me, for I
fainted----" Again she hesitated, as if not knowing how to frame her
next sentence.

"Sophy was horribly frightened. She would send for her doctor, and
though he said there was nothing much the matter with me, he insisted
that I ought to see another man--a specialist."

Peggy looked up with an anxious expression in her blue eyes--but again
Vanderlyn's ears and eyes were holden. He habitually felt for the
medical profession the unreasoning dislike, almost the contempt, your
perfectly healthy human being, living in an ailing world, often--in fact
almost always--does feel for those who play the role of the old augurs
in our modern life. Mrs. Pargeter had never been a strong woman; she was
often ill, often in the doctor's hands. So it was that Vanderlyn did not
realise the deep import of her next words----

"Sophy went with me to London--she was really very kind about it all,
and you would have liked her better, Laurence, if you had seen her that
day. The specialist did all the usual things, then he told me to go on
much as I had been doing, and to avoid any sudden shock or
excitement--in fact he said almost exactly what that dear old French
doctor said t