stood gazing at Margaret in silence. "You are a woman, and you are
good," he said at last. "She is very fond of you, she tells you
everything, and you _must_ know. If therefore you say that she--"

"Yes," answered Margaret, "I do know. I am sure she cares for him very,
very much." Here some of Garda's extraordinarily frank expressions about
Lucian, and the delight it gave her to even look at him, coming suddenly
into her memory, over all her fair face there rose a sweet deep blush.

The Doctor turned away and dropped into a chair.

"There is nothing against Mr. Spenser, I believe," Margaret began again,
after a short pause.

"It isn't that. No, I believe there is nothing." He sat there, his
figure looking unusually small, his eyes turned away.

Margaret asked some questions. By degrees the Doctor answered them. He
said that Lucian was possessed of "a genteel income." He had not
accepted his wife's large fortune; she had left everything to him, but
he had immediately given the whole back to her relatives, retaining only
the profits of some investments which she had made, since their
marriage, under his advice; this sum the Doctor described as "a
competence."

"When is Garda coming home?" Margaret asked.

"She says she isn't coming; she says she knows you have no place for her
here--no time; and she doesn't wish to stay with any one but you."

"She does not mean that. I think she should come, she has been in
Charleston a long time; Mrs. Lowndes has been wonderfully kind."

"Oh, as to that, Sally likes to have her there. She says it has made her
'young again' to see Garda. And to admire (I don't know what she meant
by that) Adolfo Torres."

"Is he there still?"

"He is there still. He doesn't believe in the least in Garda's
engagement."

"He didn't believe in the other one," said Margaret. And then she was
sorry she had said it, for the Doctor jumped up and seized his hat; it
was still insupportable to him, the thought of those two engagements.

"He's a hallucinated idiot!" he said, violently. Then, controlling
himself, he took leave of Margaret, bowing over her hand with his old
stately ceremony. Mr. Harold was in the garden? He would go out and see
him there. It was most satisfactory, certainly, the improvement in Mr.
Harold.

On the present occasion the Doctor found Lanse on a couch which he had
had carried out to the garden; here he lay contentedly smoking, and
looking at the river. Lanse liked the Doc