you."

"Are you _sure_ he told you that?"

"Good heavens! if I were _not_ sure I should be a great deal better off.
Why do you keep asking me? Isn't it bad enough for me to have to say it
at all? But he _is_ ill, and that makes everything different. I couldn't
have stood it otherwise."

"Stood--"

"Stood your going to him."

"I must go to him if he is ill."

"Ill--yes; that's the only thing that--" He stopped, and stood looking
at her.

"I am afraid he is very ill."

"Yes, he is very ill. But I'm not thinking about Lanse now. I know
everything, Margaret--everything except why you have wished, why you
have been determined, that I should think of you in the way I
have,--that is, with such outrageous, such cruel wrong. Lanse has told
me the whole story of his leaving you, _not_ your leaving him. And
before that, Garda had told me what really happened that afternoon in
the woods. Why have you treated me in this way! Why?"

Margaret, whiter than he had ever seen her, stood before him, her hands
tightly clasped. She looked like a person strained up to receive a blow.

"If you could only know how I feel when I think what you have been
through, and what the truth really was," Winthrop went on; "when I
remember my own stupidity, and dense obstinacy, all those years. I can
never atone for that, Margaret; never."

Lanse's wife put out her hand, like a person who feels her way, as she
went towards the door. "Don't stop me," she said; "I cannot talk now."

Her voice was so strained and husky that he hardly knew it.

She went hastily out.

CHAPTER XXV.

Lansing Harold was unable to move from his bed, or in his bed, for a
number of weeks. During much of this time, also, he suffered from severe
pain.

Dr. Kirby assured Aunt Katrina that the pain was a favorable symptom; it
indicated that there was no torpor; and with time, patience, and
self-denial, therefore, there would be hope of a cure.

"Lanse isn't patient," Aunt Katrina admitted. "But I have always thought
him extremely self-denying; see how he has allowed Margaret, for
instance, to do as she pleased." For Aunt Katrina now regarded the
Doctor as an intimate personal friend.

The Doctor went over to see Lanse three times a week, Winthrop's horses
taking him to the river and bringing him back. On the other days the
case was intrusted to the supervision of the local practitioner, or
rather to his super-audition, for as Lanse, after the first intervi