ry had a whimsical sense of the meeting of the white cat and this
leonine gentleman--would she purr or scratch?

"The sooner you and Jean are married the better. If Hilda thinks she
is going to keep you and Jean apart she is mistaken."

"Oh--did she know of the engagement?"

"Yes," the Doctor confessed. "I told her the other day when she came
to fix the books."

"Then that accounts for it."

"For what?"

"Dad's attitude. I thought it was queer he should fly up all in a
moment. She wanted to make trouble, Doctor, and she has made it."

Long after Derry had gone to bed, the Doctor sat there pondering on
Hilda's treachery. He was in some ways a simple man--swayed by the
impulse of the moment. The thought of deliberate plotting was
abhorrent. In his light way he had taken her lightly. He had laughed
at her. He had teased Jean, he had teased Emily, calling their
intuition jealousy. Yet they had known better than he. And why should
not women know women better than men know them? Just as men know men
in a way that women could never know. Sex erected barriers--there was
always the instinct to charm, to don one's gayest plumage; even Hilda's
frankness had been used as a lure; she knew he liked it. Would she
have been so frank if she had not felt its stimulus to a man of his
type? And, after all, had she really been frank?

Such a woman was like a poisonous weed; and he had thought she might
bloom in the same garden with Jean--until Emily had told him.

He turned to the thought of Emily with relief. Thank God he could
leave Jean in her care. If Derry went, there would still be Emily with
her sweet sanity, and her wise counsels.

He felt very old as he went upstairs. He stood for a long time in
front of his wife's picture. How sweet she had been in her
forget-me-not gown--how little and tender! Their love had burned in a
white flame--there would never be anything like that for him again.

He waked in the morning, however, ready for all that was before him.
He was a man who dwelt little on the past. There was always the day's
work, and the work of the day after.

His appetite for the work of the coming day was, it must be confessed,
whetted somewhat by the thought of what he would say to Hilda.

They had an early breakfast, with Jean between her father and Derry and
eating nothing for very happiness.

There was the start in the opal light of the early morning, with a
faint rose sky making a bac